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THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



Need there groan a world in anguish just to teach 
us sympathy? 

R. Browning 



THE SCHOOL OF 
SYMPATHY 

REMINISCENCES IN ESSAY AND VERSE 



BY 

JULIAN B. ARNOLD 

AUTHOR OF "palms AND TEMPLES," ETC. 




BOSTON 

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 

MDCCCCXX 






COPYRIGHT • 1920 • BY 
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 



THE PLIMPTON PRESS • NORWOOD • MASS • U • 8 • A 



MAY 10 rb2u 

©CU565897 



To my Wife 

MY UNFAILING SOURCE OF SYMPATHY 
I DEDICATE THESE WRITTEN THOUGHTS 



PREFACE 

Horas non numero nisi serenas 

Shadows of our years go drifting by. 
Across the lawns of memory, where lie 
Leaves long fallen, whispering as they fly 
Of an eternal Sun. 

Shadows of our moods, seeking to belie 
The braver path and guide our steps awry. 
Rive^them with smiles; knowing in yonder sky 
Reigneth the Sun. 

Shadows of our souls which would deny 
That flowers grow by rain. Ah, cease to sigh 
At ills beneficent. Lift faces high. 
Kissed by the Sun. 



CONTENTS 

CHAFFEB PAGB 

I. In the School of Sympathy . 1 
II. When Sympathy Walks 

Delicately 8 

III. The Gamut of Sympathy . . 13 

IV. In the Garden of Life ... 18 
V. The Assurance of Genius . . 20 

VI. Our Magic Carpets .... 32 

VII. The Ascension of Song ... 38 

VIII. Rheims Cathedral .... 47 

IX. The Other Side of the Moon 50 

X. When the World Was Young . 56 

XI. Knowledge 65 

XII. Beginning Our Year ... 69 

XIII. The Veil of Astarte ... 75 

XIV. The Brook of Revelations . . 84 
XV. A Parable 88 

XVI. A Romany Prophet .... 91 
XVII. Where Life and Death Are 

Neighbors 97 

XVIII. The Morning Sigh of Memnon. 103 

XIX. Light and Shadow .... 108 

XX. By Him who Sleeps at Phil^ 117 

XXI. Play Out the Game . . . , 128 



THE 
SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

T 

IN THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

The secret sympathy. 
The silver link, the silken tie, 
"WTiich heart to heart and mind to mind 
In body and in soul can bind. 

IN our welded language there are words, 
which, through long and careless usage, 
have acquired a variety of meanings ; while 
others show a native insularity, rigidly keeping 
to themselves. This is partly due to the in- 
herent disposition of words, for all words have 
their individual temperaments and not only in 
their features but in their traits betray their 
parentage, and their bringing-up. Who, for 
instance, would venture to trifle with the gra- 
cious but severe aloofness of the word home? 
It was born in an Aryan tribe, to whose body- 
politic the family unit was the soul, and it has 
never forgotten its lonely childhood in the 
glades of Gothic forests. Around its wild cradle 
were ranged highly developed civilizations striv- 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

ing for unification and the mastery of the world. 
To them the widening State was home. The 
thought implied by this fair-haired Gothic word 
could find no closer synonym on Roman lips 
than the dark-haired word domus — as if a 
house were necessarily a home — and Rome has 
bequeathed to the modern Spaniard only the 
word hogar (a hearth), while French lips cam- 
ouflage the idea under the expression cliez nous. 
Many words display this reservation of char- 
acter, and like Csesar's wife must ever be above 
suspicion. 

Other words are bolder. They go forth into 
the world and become accomplished in new uses, 
helping men to convey their thoughts in clearer 
ways; while others sink to levels so base that 
one sorrows to see or hear them. These latter 
were once able assistants of the mind, but they 
have suffered wrong by those who set them to 
unworthy tasks or crippled them and have lost 
their birthright. Occasionally a word grows 
frivolous. It becomes a buffoon, as in the 
modern misusage of "blooming" which bars it 
from sedate service. Only with extreme diffi- 
dence would one now hail the "blooming Spring" 
or invite his associates to "Up and follow him 
to win a blooming bride." 

_ _____ 



IN THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

In another category altogether are some 
words, patrician in their origin and born to 
destinies of power and helpfulness. Among 
them we may always recognize the title of this 
essay ; a word having great possessions yet ever 
bounteous to the poor. Since its birth in 
Greece forty centuries ago it has inherited 
much abstract thought and embraced many 
meanings. But they have always been generous 
and big-hearted. How should it be otherwise 
with a word that was born of such parentage as 
Syn and Pathos, with feeling? Whatever limi- 
tations this word may once have had, it has 
none now. For each of us it infers the founda- 
tion of compassionate thoughts and deeds. If 
there were truth in the adage that the purpose 
of a coat is to cover a multitude of sins, we may 
balance the equation by asserting that a cloak 
of sympathy covers countless graces. Like the 
rays of the sun which seem only to lighten the 
world in the daytime but live in the dark heart 
of coal or in the closed flower in its midnight 
sleep, so sympathy, in its variant phases, is the 
basic cause of nearly all our kindlier attitudes 
of mind. Indeed it would be difficult to aim, 
even distantly, at the fulfillment of that com- 
plex commandment "thou shalt love thy neigh- 

__ 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

bor as thyself" if evolution had not saturated 
us with sympathetic knowledge of what our 
neighbor asks. 

Some years ago in London at one of those 
salons where gather, by a sort of mental capil- 
lary attraction, the men and women famous in 
current history, I overheard an exquisite use of 
this word sympathy in its broader sense. I was 
conversing with the author of The Light of 
Asia, when our hostess naively asked him, 

"In which of all the many lands you have 
visited did you find and bring away your pretty 
manners?" 

"Madame, if I have any such possessions 
other than in your kind belief, I did not need to 
seek them in travel ; I found them nearer your- 
self." 

"Then you shall tell me where this mag- 
netized spot may be, and my children shall play 
there, for the benefit of posterity." 

"Truly it is a playground for children as 
well as for those grown up. But seriously, if 
I tell you, you will not betray my secret, will 
you.?" 

"Indeed I will not." 

"Very well. When I was a little boy I went 
to a school, still flourishing, which was kept by 



IN THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

a lady; and there I learnt a number of things 
which have been useful to myself and I trust to 
others." 

"Oh, do tell me her name, you said you 
would." 

"Yes, but you will not tell?" 

"No indeed I will not ; I promise, except that 
my children shall certainly go there. You 
could not mind that I am sure?" 

"Madame, they will go there I know, having 
so sweet a mother. The school was kept by 
Dame Sympathy." 

How much is hidden beneath that word. It 
had been the talisman of a long and varied 
career and had carried its wearer into the 
hearts of millions of men. Yet it was confided 
as a secret, for sympathy is curiously shy. 
Demurely it takes by-paths to its goal rather 
than the crowded roads, and is ever diffident of 
letting the left hand know what the right hand 
doeth. Its nature is so; but probably past 
centuries of narrow dogma, wherein more gen- 
erous ideas expressed themselves covertly, have 
helped to ingrain in men the habit of hiding 
their feelings. Like the Spartan boy bearing 
the fox in his bosom, the wounds of sympathy 
had, in past ages, often to be borne in silence. 

__ 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

Can anyone imagine that above the blood- 
lust which hovered like some foul miasma over 
the gladiatorial displays of Rome there did not 
ascend a radiant mist of sympathetic thoughts ; 
radiant as the arc of promise, misty as the 
eyes of Eon weeping for her slain Memnon? 
The Vestal virgins might turn their thumbs 
downwards dooming the fallen to death, but 
many a gentler wish went forth to spare, lead- 
ing to a dawn when the Coliseum should be 
remembered only as a madness of the night. 

So must it have been with many a dark page 
of history. Even a modern crowd is sometimes 
sphinx-like in betraying its real leanings until 
some sudden spark fires the impulse of its sym- 
pathies. And like the crowd, the individual too 
often wears an impassive mask, disguising the 
evolving soul. We hail the event which tears 
from us or from others the shadows of this 
mask, and shows the light shining in the eyes 
of the heart. Truth dwelleth not alone at the 
bottom of her well. 

But the writing on faces is not for all to 
read. A charming story was told by John 
Ruskin to show how blind may be even the most 
sympathetic eyes. He was traveling in a rail- 
way car and had taken his seat opposite a man 



IN THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

whose features distressed him by their plain- 
ness and even harsh lines. Presently his fellow 
traveler dropped his paper, and the great es- 
sayist picked it up and handed it back to him. 
As he did so his companion thanked him with 
such a smile that inwardly Ruskin said "Merci- 
ful gods, what a glorious face ; and what a fool 
I was." 



[7.] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



II 

WHEN SYMPATHY WALKS 
DELICATELY 

The more we know, the better we forgive, 
Who'er feels deeply, feels for all who live. 

A NOTABLE quality of sympathy is its 
proneness to walk delicately. It has 
been said that the sympathy which con- 
tains a vestige of pity is not true sympathy, 
and the phrase aptly indicates a desire to go 
about its compassionate business as quietly as 
possible. Like the violet it hastens to solace 
the hurts of winter, 

But hides the while under tender leaves 
Which must spread broad in other suns, and lift 
In later lives a crowned head to the sky. 

In the anxiety which sympathy displays not 
to be recognized it will screen its identity, or 
like Victor Hugo, when his little granddaughter 
was put into the closet for some delinquency, it 
will wait until the stern authorities are not 
looking and then slip a box of chocolates into 

_ 



SYMPATHY WALKS DELICATELY 



the wrong-doer's hand. For sympathy is an 
incorrigible contravener of the law. 

This solicitude of sympathy to escape atten- 
tion may be illustrated in the following recol- 
lection. The scene is a dinner party in London 
about twentj'-five years ago. Amongst the 
guests was John Ruskin, whom the cultured 
public knows as a great critic, and the sub- 
merged world knew as a man who gave his 
fortune away in charities. Ruskin had been 
saying that it was a mistake to give alms at 
random, and that men should imitate the gods 
and help only those who helped themselves. It 
was inevitable that Olympus, thus invoked, 
should hear and protest ; and the bolt of Zeus 
fell in this wise. 

Opposite Ruskin was sitting the editor of a 
great London newspaper, wielding in those days 
probably as large a measure of influence in 
British affairs as any Cabinet minister. With 
a grave face, but humorous twinkle in his eyes, 
he turned to our host saying: 

"What Mr. Ruskin alleges as the creed of 
charity is possibly practiced by some, happily 
not by many, certainly not by himself. If I 
may be temporarily shielded from the arrows 
of such a contestant, I will relate a little story 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

which may support my denial of his assertion 
and induce him to cry with Benedict 'A mir- 
acle, our hands against our hearts.' 

"Some years ago there was heard in one of 
our magistrate's courts a case affecting wide 
interests, sordid in its details but so important 
in its bearings that it drew to that minor court 
many men whose studies led them to take note 
of such things. There were, of course, sundry 
smaller eases to be dealt with before the cause 
celehre; the pitiful flotsam and jetsam of a 
great city washed into these magisterial eddies 
on the morning tide. 

*' Amongst the onlookers, thus induced to visit 
this clearing-house of sorrow, were two men 
seated together in the well of the court, keenly 
observant of all that passed before them. The 
minor cases were swiftly disposed of; drunken- 
ness, thefts, and the many discords of life; 
when a final delinquent was placed on the pris- 
oner's stand, a fine young fellow endowed by 
nature to be the builder of gladness for himself 
and others, but now ragged, blear-eyed and 
corrupted with evil communications. The 
charge against him was that of knocking his 
wife down and grievously assaulting her in a 
fit of drunkenness. With the abruptness of 



SYMPATHY WALKS DELICATELY 

justice thus dispensed the only witness was at 
once called — his wife. She took her place in 
the grim scene, a mere child in years, with her 
pretty face full of suppressed tears; and like 
some graceful animal caught in the hunter's 
snare she gazed frightenedly at those around 
her, the magistrate and the unknown crowd, 
and then her eyes timidly sought the prisoner's 
box — and met his ! 

"Who may know what thoughts of anger 
filled her heart when she stepped into the wit- 
ness box ; but neither heart nor face had anger 
in them now. Behind the tearful eyes there was 
a tenderness which lit their sadness and bade 
her heart forgive this her Calvary. Vaguely 
she heard her name called by the official of the 
court, and her evidence demanded. In silence 
she continued to look towards the place where 
stood the man she loved. 

"Then the magistrate asked, *Is it true that 
the prisoner knocked you down, and treated 
you so violently and badly? Do not be afraid; 
teUme.' 

"The gentleness of the tone awakened her 
from mental vales where love was blind with its 
own tears to the realities around her — to be 
transmuted by that love. For with an utter 

_ __ 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

abandonment of fear she suddenly stretched 
out her arms, crying, 'Oh, no, no, no, Sir, it is 
not true; he could not really mean to hurt me. 
It is not true ; give him back to me.' 

"And the wise magistrate gave him back to 
her. 

"But in the well of that court one of the two 
watchers of this scene whispered to the other, 
'Friend, you are the editor of a great news- 
paper. Start a subscription for that pair. 
Set them up in a clean and happy life ; so shall 
the good God bless you. Here is my contribu- 
tion to the fund you will collect.' 

"Kind host, the man who started that fund 
which has given to that pair of lovers a useful 
and glad life in one of Britain's great colonies 
was Mr, Ruskin ; I was only the editor, the in- 
strument of a creed more gracious than the one 
he offered just now as the mask which sympathy 
ofttimes holds before her face." 



[ 12 ] 



THE GAMUT OF SYMPATHY 



III 

THE GAMUT OF SYMPATHY 

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds 
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased. 

SYMPATHIES which are aroused in us by 
scenes, colors, sounds and scents afford 
food for thought. I once took some care 
to ascertain what colors were preferred by lead- 
ing thinkers and artists of our time, and the 
results were curiously indicative of the chooser's 
mind. Several poets and men of science loved 
the clearer tints of yellow. The author of the 
Light of Asia had an Oriental passion for all 
colors, but rapturously praised, *'the melted 
gold of the morning sun, the yellow sheen of the 
Buddhist robe, the ochre of a waving field of 
wheat." The accepted color of intellectuality 
was strong in the sympathetic thoughts of such 
men. 

With novelists and dramatists I found that 
deep reds were favorite tints. The late Charles 
Reade saw life phrased "in the carmines of the 

[ 13 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

setting sun," Clark Russell sensed it *'in the 
pinks with which the dawn paints the sky,"while 
a popular lady novelist, Mrs. Lynn Lynton, 
gave me quite a lecture on the pageantry of 
history which to her eyes was conjured forth 
upon the sight of purple; "That royal, regnant 
purple," she said, "which is the color of the 
robes of princes, the imperial border of the 
toga, the gift of the sea-gods who gave pearls 
to queens but the treasure of the shells of Tyre 
and Sidon to kings." 

Of sounds the sympathetic powers seem still 
more subtle, and reach higher than the realms 
of mundane music. With some this gift is but 
slightly developed. Others are so responsive 
that sounds for them have close affinities with 
color vibrations and their ears are almost as 
sensitive as microphones. I have heard a noted 
violinist, Signor Romane, stop in the middle of 
an important solo because the almost inaudible 
rumble of a distant carriage marred the con- 
cord between himself and his violin. The same 
maestro told me that being overtaken by a storm 
he sought shelter in a barn, and whilst there 
was so impressed by the majesty of the thunder 
that he took his violin from its case and sought 
to reproduce the rolling tones. At last attain- 

-_ 



THE GAMUT OF SYMPATHY 

ing success he cried exultantly, "I have it, I 
have it ; now I can talk with God." 

The famous operatic singer, Madam Gomez, 
confided to me that there were certain notes in 
her voice which could never be happily wedded 
to French, and other notes which obstinately 
refused to speak in English, but that it had 
always been a delight to her to sing from her 
heart the vowels of Italian. Such instances are, 
perhaps, the expressions of physical enjoyment 
experienced by musicians in the exercise of their 
art, rather than expositions of sympathy. 
There are sounds, however, which reach us not 
always by the ear; delicate notes finding re- 
sponsive vibrations in our inmost souls which 
wake far memories or bear us to the skies upon 
the rhythm of eternal harmonies. 

And scents! Why have the poets, in their 
multitude of odes and sonnets, conspired to 
omit all mention of the nose? Lorenzo de 
Medici was as original in poesy as in the man- 
agement of Florentine politics when he wrote 
of Nencia, 

Her eyes! and twixt them comes the winsome nose 
"With proud pink nostrils like the pits in a rose. 

The nose is by no means negligible. Many 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

people are extremely sensitive to perfumes. The 
incense-laden air of a cathedral, the smell of 
pines and woodlands, or the scented gratitude 
of field and hedgerow when rain has fallen strike 
chords in their inner consciousness. Memories 
long dormant are aroused, or past scenes re- 
called by some chance encounter with a par- 
ticular odor. Persons with artistic tempera- 
ments are especially susceptible to perfumes, as 
if there were some sympathetic association be- 
tween the appreciation of beauty and the vi- 
brations set up by these elusive and delicate 
aromas. For myself I occasionally pass within 
the magic sway of some scent which instan- 
taneously wafts me to lands wherein I wandered 
long years ago. Wood smoke mingled with the 
breath of the sea, and what else I know not, 
bears me away to the Fjords of Norway; or 
the dust of a country road trembling in the 
sunbeams of a summer-day and charged with 
the pollen of clover, will whisper "Your feet 
tread again the sands of Egypt, and the Lord 
of thy Heaven is Ammon." 

Verily the field of sympathy has no boun- 
dary. Ultimately, it may prove to be the 
subtlest law of growth, boundless as infinitude, 
continuing as eternity, more omnipotent than 

[ 16 ] 



THE GAMUT OF SYMPATHY 

the faith which moveth mountains. No depths 
beneath us, no sanctuaries above deter it. 
Downward it carries us beyond the wraiths of 
earliest forms of life held in archean granites ; 
down to the buried silt of primal oceans grieved 
with such weight of superincumbent hills that 
out of pressure and dull pain this ooze evolves 
as marble, tinted as the mists of sunrise. 

Upward our sympathy has endless range. 
Upon the wings of the young-eyed soul it 
mounts unfettered. Across the silver-atoUed 
wastes of heaven it voyages unchallenged. With 
the spiral of the moving stars it climbs to that 
far vortex of time and space where dwells the 
brooding Power of Good. For surely if the 
lowest note in the cosmic scale entreats sym- 
pathy of us shall not the highest ask it also? 
If, as a law of physics, it be true that a child 
stamping on its nursery floor sets in motion 
vibrations which are sensed by the farthest 
planet of our system, shall not the forces fo- 
cused in sympathy aid not only all that is but 
also Him.? 



[ 17 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

IV 

IN THE GARDEN OF LIFE 

PRIVATE GEORGE HUBBS, late of the 
Ypres sector, lay a-dying in the base 
hospital. "Do you think, Nurse, that 
there is any chance for me?" he asked. And 
the Nurse, aware of his approaching death, an- 
swered, "Yours is a serious case but the Doctor 
never loses hope, nor would he wish you to do 
so." 

"I was not thinking of my body. Nurse. I 
saw the White Christ walking in the trench an 
hour before I got my ticket to the West and I 
will obey the Great Doctor and hope. Will 
you give me one of those flowers to — to take 
with me.?" 

WHAT THE FLOWER SAID TO 
PRIVATE HUBBS 

And She supposing Him the Gardener; 

Fool, as if God's Son, 

Cares for the fiowers that are done. 

Ah! But He cares; 
And in the garden of His heart 

__ 



IN THE GARDEN OF LIFE 

The humblest life finds tendence, and its part 
Is spaced, wherein it grows towards beauty. 

He watcheth 
How the Sower's hands 
Scatter the souls of men amid the lands 
Each in its fitting clime and time — 
Seedlings of Heaven, linking harvests past and yet to 

be — 
Clad in their husks and shells, 
Discarded ere the full bloom tells 
The guerdon of a season's life, 
And gain of strife. 

He knoweth 
The needs of aU within that garden wide 
And guardeth each. Ever what best betide 
That He bestoweth: 

Sending fair winds, the beat of angel wings. 
Filled with the hope that brings 
A zest to effort. Using the tears of life, like rain 
From passing clouds, to teach 
The buds of aspiration, seek and gain 
The sun-lit kiss of God. 

He Ufteth 
The drooping stem; the tendril sees 
And guides its weakling arms to heights above 
The tangled growths; 

And where the light and sunshine promise love 
Their small hands setteth. 
From weeds and briars His garden frees: 
Protecting and persuading till the tears 
Of storms are past, and each life rears 
Its heart of gold to face the golden Sun 
And smile in beauty toward the Light: 
Ah ! But He cares. 

[ 19 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



THE ASSURANCE OF GENIUS 

What is genius but deep feeling 
Waken'd by passion, to revealing? 

GENIUS has much conscience but little 
morality. Like the prism thrown upon 
a wall by the chance moving of a glass 
it enthralls us with the display of its own in- 
timacy with light ; yet in nowise will it endure 
obstruction. In the realms of its own expres- 
sion, whether of science, of literature or of art, 
fear is as foreign to its purpose as insincerity, 
but it suffers sorely under the conventionalities 
which constrain those who climb on lowlier 
paths. Biography sparkles with instances, for 
by grace divine the cycles of mankind's dark- 
ness have been lit by a myriad wayward stars 
of genius whose light evades the law of vibra- 
tory waves and is both instant and continuing. 
To the constellation that shone above my 
natal hour I turn my mental telescope and 
watch a single star, the late Sir Edwin Arnold. 
Some acquaintance with the assurance of his 
genius may not alone exemplify the title of this 
inadequate sketch but also prove of interest. It 

[ 20 ] 



THE ASSURANCE OF GENIUS 

may be said of most men that they are moulded 
by their environment and of a few that they 
bend their environment to themselves. In a 
marked degree the author of The Light of Asia 
belonged to the latter type. Reared in that 
atmosphere of dogmatic beliefs and dull con- 
servatism which obtained in the homes of Eng- 
lish country squires of the Victorian era, his 
earliest instincts freed him from its thralldom, 
and steeped his mind with tales of the enchanted 
lands of Asia. A pentecostal gift of tongues 
descended upon him. As a child he invested in 
a bilingual Greek and Latin testament, teaching 
himself to follow in those languages the epistles 
in his village church. Then he purchased a 
Hebrew grammar, learning a page of it each 
day until he could read the Talmud in the 
vernacular. Other languages were as readily 
acquired, until in the course of years he was 
eloquent in twenty. But always he had, in 
Elizabeth's phrase, foul scorn of grammars. 
Often he would say, "We learn the tender 
strength of language at our mother's knee and 
grow to love its beauty and revere its power. 
Then from the shadows of life creeps forth an 
assassin who stabs it in the back, and his name 
is Grammarian. If you must wrong language by 

[ 21 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

listening to the cold analysis of grammar do 
so, but as soon as may be throw the grammar 
over the garden wall and get back to some 
master writer of the tongue you would learn 
and follow him with a dictionary." Truly a 
rebellious scholar. 

So in poetry his orbit was elliptic. He lisped 
in numbers for the numbers came, and his 
earlier poems brought him into literary inti- 
macy with Victor Hugo, Emerson, Swinburne 
and others of the galactic plane he traversed. 
But his first public triumph (an instructive in- 
stance of the assurance of genius) occurred 
on his taking the Newdigate prize at Oxford 
with his poem, The Feast of Belshazzar. 
According to the Oxford custom it was recited 
by the author in the Sheldonian Theatre and 
its unusual vigor and wealth of expression at 
once secured for it wide acknowledgment. But 
in the circles of scholarship its erudition ap- 
peared so remarkable that the Wise Men of the 
University sought from the young poet infor- 
mation concerning the sources of the Akkadian 
and Babylonian names which add such racial 
colour to the verses. In complimenting him on 
the word-picture which he had painted of the 
fall of the Chaldean power one of his interro- 

[22] 



THE ASSURANCE OF GENIUS 

gators quoted the lines: 

No lack of goodly company was there. 

No lack of laughing eyes to light the cheer; 

From Dara trooped they, from Daremma's grove 

The suns of battle and the moons of love; 

From where Arrissia's silver waters sleep 

To Imla's marshes and the inland deep; 

From pleasant Calah and from Sittacene 

The horseman's captain and the harem's queen. 

To the conclave of learned Dons he suavely 
answered that the scattered nature of his read- 
ings forbade his remembering at the moment the 
actual sources of these references. But in after 
years he confessed to the writer of this tribute 
to his brilliant if unconventional mind that he 
coined all these Chaldean names to suit the 
scanning of his lines. It was worthy of a David 
Chatterton thus to beard the Assyriologists in 
their den. 

This poem made its impress also upon the 
mind of a young actor, afterwards to be known 
to fame as Sir Henry Irving. Of the many 
recitative pieces in his repertoire this remained 
his favorite, and it formed the initial link in an 
enduring friendship between the author and its 
gifted interpreter. During the residence of the 
poet in Japan he wrote for Irving the Samurai 
tragedy of Adzuma; sending the play to me to 

__ 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

arrange for its public rendering at the Lyceum. 
But in the conversations which I had with 
Irving on this matter we encountered numerous 
technical difficulties connected with the trans- 
planting to the boards of a London theatre a 
work so oriental in thought and setting, and 
the dramatic death of Irving at Bradford 
abruptly terminated our efforts towards its 
production. 

Amongst those also present at the first read- 
ing of the Feast of Belshazzar in the Sheldonian 
Theatre was Benjamin Disraeli, then just rising 
to fame and destined to become as the Earl of 
Beaconsfield and Premier of Great Britain one 
of the great figures of the Victorian age. On 
being introduced to the hero of the day the 
future Prime Minister said, in his somewhat 
florid diction, "Young Sir, I congratulate you. 
The heights of Parnassus call you; other 
heights call me. In the years that are coming 
both of us will answer to their summons, and 
from the benches of Literature and State we 
will wave again our salutations of this day." 
Verily the assurance of genius has at times the 
vision of prophecy. The pen of the young 
author was destined to prove a potent helper to 
the policies of Disraeli; and on the brows of 

[24] 



THE ASSURANCE OF GENIUS 

both these men was written the ultimate ful- 
fiHment of the promise to renew their saluta- 
tions. 

It happened in this wise. Long afterwards 
when the nations of the world awaited anxiously 
the outcome of certain intricate and dangerous 
negotiations arising from the errors of the Con- 
gress of Berlin there came a day when the bal- 
ancing of the conflicting national interests hung 
upon the decision which would be pronounced 
at the impending opening of Parliament. Upon 
the wording of the "speech from the throne" 
which would open the deliberations of Parlia- 
ment depended in large measure whether the 
dogs of war could be held in leash or whether 
they must be loosed and make a shambles of 
Europe. Two nights before the fateful date I 
was dining with Sir Edwin discussing the 
omens, for as the editor of the leading London 
newspaper and one of the keenest judges of his 
country's mood, no man was more eminently 
fitted to act as oracle at this hour. So must 
have thought the all-powerful Prime Minister, 
Lord Beaconsfield, for in the midst of our con- 
versation a messenger arrived from Downing 
Street inviting Sir Edwin to draft the history- 
making speech which should proclaim to the 

[ 25 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

world the British policy and still the storm. 
Clear was the vision which had foreseen the day 
when from the benches of Literature and State 
these two men, so different in temperaments yet 
so conscious of their innate strength, would 
wave again their salutations. 

In the paths of travel the assurance of genius 
bore our subject unscathed by field and flood. 
Touristdom was to him an abomination, and 
he objected to taking the same road twice if an 
alternative way might be found; but once en 
voyage no untoward circumstance could aifect 
his serene temper. It was my privilege to 
wander with him in many countries, and always 
he fulfilled his axiom that the man who does not 
live in heart a boy never was born one. I have 
seen him supremely at home in a native mule 
cart on the frontiers of Morocco ; saluting the 
viking-gods as he sailed his fishing smack 
through the angers of the North Sea ; quoting 
Tacitus as his authority for the building of a 
log hut on the marge of a fjord in Norway; 
sitting cross-legged in an Aleppo shop the 
whilst he discussed politics with a malignant 
and unturbaned Turk; seated at the campfire 
of a Bedaween village after our dahabeah had 
been wrecked on the Nile; tramping through 

[26] 



THE ASSURANCE OF GENIUS 

Wales with a couple of donkeys which we had 
commandeered to carry our knapsacks ; and in 
a score of other abnormal situations none of 
which might disturb the assurance of his phil- 
osophy. 

As a conversationalist he was, of course, 
noted for his brilliancy and depth, but always 
there lurked in his phrases some surprise, some 
happy radio-quality which saw profoundly, lit 
keenly, and straightway upset accepted the- 
ories. His wit had a rapier suddenness but ever 
carried a button at its point lest it should hurt. 
I do not think that anyone ever knew him to 
utter an ungracious comment of earth or sky 
or sea or anything that therein is. On one 
occasion I recollect that his fellow guests were 
laughing at the vagaries of dudes and mashers, 
and someone invited the opinion of the grave 
but kindly poet. He answered simply, "If a 
young gentleman thinks that it is the right 
thing to walk abroad with a large expanse of 
shirt front and an assertive diamond glistening 
in its midst — if he really thinks that this is 
the right thing to do, and does it ; how sweet of 
him!" 

In graver style he would courteously but 
logically defend large theories. To the too 

__ 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

sweeping demand of the late W. E. Gladstone, 
"Of course, Sir Edwin, you will grant that 
Europe was appointed for the Christians," I 
heard him reply, "Certainly, but on one con- 
dition." "And what may be your condition?" 
asked Gladstone. "That you will grant that 
Asia was appointed — for whom shall we say, 
Buddhists, Brahmins, Moslems, Shinto-wor- 
shippers?" "By no means can I grant you 
that." "Then, Mr. Gladstone, I fear that I 
cannot accept your major premises." 

Nor was his pen less ready than his speech. 
He scattered verses as a steel turning lathe 
showers its sparks. Countless graceful and un- 
published poems of his lie perdu in birthday 
volumes and autograph collections, while the 
hotel books of every land contain his variorum 
notce in witty and pertinent poesy. Thought 
with him clothed itself instantly in apt expres- 
sion. I once handed him an evening newspaper, 
pointing out a paragraph which mentioned that 
Mr. Colman, of mustard fame, had just been 
knighted. Taking a pencil from his pocket he 
wrote on the margin of the paper without a 
moment's hesitation. 

Oh, new-made Knight of Colman's mustard, 
The meaning of this badge we see, 

[ 28 J 



THE ASSURANCE OF GENIU 



How many a knight who fought and blustered. 
Hath wept and yielded meeting thee. 

To the usual accessories of a man of letters 
he was wholly indifferent. His books were 
mainly composed in the unconsidered trifles of 
time. They assisted to bind together the ac- 
tivities of a life built of large affairs. The 
Light of Asia, in its first rough condition, was 
written in odd minutes on the backs of en- 
velopes, the margins of newspapers and his 
shirt cuffs. If his pencil broke or the quill pen 
grew moody he turned it round and dipping the 
blunt end into the ink pot would proceed uncon- 
cernedly with the composition. In the absence 
of any such implement I have heard him re- 
mark, "What, no pen? well, bring me the 
kitchen poker." Books gathered unto him as 
cosmic dust settles upon our whirling planet; 
but though he absorbed literature, he would 
seldom read a book twice, and he gave away his 
libraries as fast as they accumulated. 

At the shrines of art, science, literature and 
scholarship he worshipped as an adept, yet to 
no dogmas would he subscribe, nor yield to 
prejudices. The wonder and charm of his 
versatility was that it gave no impression of 
feverish willingness, no sense of unnatural 

[ 29 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

strain. He passed easilj^ and joyously from 
one of his manifold intellectual activities to an- 
other without apparent fatigue and with a 
temper of imperturbable sweetness. 

Let me close this brief sketch of one who 
showed so well the assurance of genius, by re- 
calling a walk with him amid the ruins of the 
Acropolis at Athens. It had been one of those 
typical midwinter days of the ^gean coasts 
when the sunlight lies lovingly upon the altars 
of ancient Greece and the shadows of the cy- 
press trees speak of her modern sorrows. Wan- 
dering amongst some stone-work, tumbled by 
cannon shot in the war with Turkey, the poet 
chanced to see, peering at him from beneath a 
broken capital, the skull of a Turk. Seating 
himself upon a fallen column and using the 
white surface of the cranium as his tablet, he 
wrote, without effort or erasure, the noted 
"Dedication to a Skull," which ends with the 
lines : 

Call not me a thing of the clod! 

The Parthenon owned no such plan! 
Man made that temple for a God, 

God made these temples for a man! 

Handing to me the skull thus inscribed (I 
had it mounted as a vase) he picked up a piece 



THE ASSURANCE OF GENIUS 

of stone, some fragment cast down by time or 
siege from the Acropolis, and prompted doubt- 
less by its shape, proceeded to carve it with 
the chisel in a pocket knife, producing in little 
time an excellent replica of the helmeted head 
of Pallas Athene. As the shadows of evening 
lengthened he sketched, upon the fly-leaf of a 
book, the temple-crowned Acropolis, and at a 
later date, transformed this sketch into a large 
oil-painting, a masterful and sympathetic ren- 
dering of the scene, with the dark foreground 
of modern Greece contrasted against the white 
and ghostly temples enthroned upon the rock 
of the Acropolis, canopied by a cloud-flecked 
sky from which the silver orb of Diana peeped 
in watchful guidance of her daughters. No es 
todo plata que reluce. Recently I sent this 
picture to be cleaned and the dismayed expert 
notified me that the moon had incontinently 
come off in the cleaning! It had proved to be 
merely a torn disc of white paper pasted at the 
edge of a cloud, some after-thought of the 
artist seeking to give to his work the touch 
which seemed to him lacking. Ah, well; the 
moon, though a thing of beauty, is subject to 
eclipse, but the assurance of genius is a joy 
forever. 

[ 31 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



VI 

OUR MAGIC CARPETS 

Our thoughts are boundless as our souls are free. 

Byron 

TO each of us at birth is given a magic 
carpet, swifter and more wondrous than 
any described by Shahrazad. On the 
looms of thought it is woven; its woof is spun 
from memories, its warp is made from the many- 
hued skein of imagination. Summoned by the 
mental process of intent or by some uncon- 
trolled and momentary reminiscence it bears us 
instantly away. Its knowledge of all paths by 
land and sea and air grows with our own learn- 
ing and experiences, yet in no wise is it bound 
by limitations save the retarding weight of our 
own doubts. 

No frontiers bar its passage; no distance 
daunts it ; nor does it grant us time to consider 
the marvel of its speed and faithfulness. We 
think of some scene, some condition, and 

[ 32 ] 



OUR MAGIC CARPETS 



straightway we are there, environed by the 
colors, sounds and movements pertinent to the 
place. What is not true to the circumstances 
of our quest dies upon the rushing wind of 
swift passage, for our magic carpet derives its 
movement from a thought and jettisons all that 
is not of it. 

No possession in life is more gracious to each 
of us than this. It acknowledges neither wealth 
nor poverty. It obeys the bidding of the cripple 
as readily as the summons of the strong. It is 
the unfailing associate of childhood, the remind- 
ful comforter of old age, the inexhaustible 
teacher of our years of action. How else should 
the artist sense the depths of his unpainted 
canvas ; or the sculptor see the contours of his 
statue in the rough-hewn block of marble; or 
the dramatist fill his empty stage with living 
figures ; or the novelist witness the episodes of 
his unwritten story ; or the historian recall the 
smoke of burning cities sacked by the foe, the 
smiling landscape of prosperous days, the clash 
and havoc of war and the solemn conclaves of 
peace. Nay more ; the artist, sculptor, drama- 
tist, novelist and historian may bear us to the 
realms of their conducting thoughts. They 
point the path which we may follow, for all true 

[ 33 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

works of art are their own sufficient guide 
books. 

It has been my privilege to travel thus on 
carpets magical with many of the master pilots 
of my time in the fields of science, literature, 
art and geographical discovery. The late Sir 
William Crookes used to bring to my father's 
house his half completed inventions, and as a 
boy, my soul breathless with expectation, I 
watched him perfect his radiometer and in later 
years those delicate instruments which wrested 
secrets from the quiet lips of Nature. I have 
sat in studios whilst some of the notable pic- 
tures of the age were painted, such as "The 
Roll Call" by Elizabeth Thompson. I have 
assisted in the organization of the expeditions 
which enabled Sir Henry M. Stanley to map 
the heart of Africa, and the late George Smith 
to excavate the buried cities of Assyria. I 
have been an intimate witness of the writing of 
many famous books, like The Light of Asia, 
which today enrich our libraries. And ever at 
a sign from the master of tool, brush, pencil or 
pen, as the mahout wields his ankus, our magic 
carpets have borne us on the winds of science 
beyond the murky atmospheres of earth to the 
sun-starred meadows of light, or carried us 

__ 



OUR MAGIC CARPETS 



from peaceful studios to the grim battlefields 
of the Crimea, or transformed the sombre fur- 
nishings of a London home to the green and 
golden sward beneath the Bodi tree where sat 
the supreme and gentle Teacher of India. 

Perhaps the most striking instance that I 
can recall of the mind being, in Milton's phrase, 
**its own place," was evidenced for me in the 
writing of The Voyage of Ithobal, by the late 
Sir Edwin Arnold. That book, it will be re- 
membered, describes in verse the adventures of 
certain Phoenicians who undertook, at the com- 
mand of Pharoah Neco of Egypt, the first re- 
corded circumnavigation of Africa. The 
account is given by Herodotus who states, in 
his terse, quaint style, that "the Phoenicians, 
setting out from the Red Sea, navigated the 
Southern Sea; when autumn came, they went 
ashore and sowed the land, by whatever part 
of Libya they happened to be sailing, and 
waited for the harvest ; and having reaped the 
corn, they put to sea again. When two years 
had thus passed, in the third, having doubled 
the Pillars of Hercules, they arrived in Egypt, 
and related that as they sailed round Libya, 
they had the Sun on their right hand." 

Of this voyage, the poet builds the detailed 



THE SCHOOX OP SYMPATHY 

story. It was his last work and was dictated 
when illness had rendered him totally blind. 
Nevertheless, with the inward vision which is 
ours when we travel upon our magic carpets, 
he describes the preparation of the expedition 
on the shores of the Red Sea and follows its 
fortunes around the continent of mystery until 
the worn oars of his Phoenician sailors are 
shipped and the ragged sails of their boats flap 
triumphant at the Nile's mouth. Each fea- 
ture of the immense coast line is explored ; the 
different tribes are accurately portrayed ; their 
greetings to the mariners are interpreted from 
the viewpoint of those who worshipped Baal 
and Astarte; strange animals and birds move 
across the pages of the poem ; and all its world 
is clothed with the variant verdure of Africa. 
It is not so much a book as a canvas painted 
with words ; a changeful scape of land and sea, 
an epitome of African color, sound and life. 

So true is its sympathy with the setting that 
when Sir Henry M. Stanley quietly entered 
the library of the blind poet and heard him 
dictating some passages descriptive of the 
Swahili coast, he laid his hand upon the 
shoulder of his friend and said, "Arnold, it is 
you, not I, who know that land so well," and 

[ 36] 



OUR MAGIC CARPETS 



the poet answered as simply, "Stanley, I have 
learned that the eyes are keenest when they 
look within." 

Oh, Shahrazad, gracious guide in many an 
enchanted land, boast not of your magic 
carpets, for each of us possesses one. 



[37 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

VII 

THE ASCENSION OF SONG 

Now the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne were 
nine and ever they sing of the deeds of gods and men. 

Hesiod 

Then sang Deborah, 

I will sing praises unto the Lord God of Israel, 

Before whom the earth trembled, yea, trembled when He 

went'st forth. 
The heavens and the clouds dropped water; 
And Kishon, the ancient river Kishon, swept them away; 
Even the kings who fought by the waters of Megiddo. 
Their horsehoofs were broken by means of the prancings. 
Oh my soul, Thou hast trodden down strength. 
Awake, awake, Deborah, awake, awake. 
Utter a Song. 

CAN we not still hear the song of Deborah, 
as, forgetting bodily weariness in her 
elation, she leads the cymbal players be- 
fore her battle-torn and victorious Israelites.? 
Who would seek the faint emotions which, like 
will-o'-the-wisps, flicker o'er the shallows of 
modern fiction, when from the cliifs of time 
reverberate echoes of episodes enshrined in song 
such as hers ; songs which have stirred, and for 
aeons will stir, the imagination of nations? 

__ 



THE ASCENSION OF SONG 

For had not Jabin, who reigned in Hazor, 
threatened to make a wilderness of Israel, and 
to that end had sent the captain of his hosts, 
one Sisera, with nine hundred chariots of iron 
and warriors in number as the sands of the sea? 
Dire was the need of the hour, yet whither 
should Israel turn? 

And one said, "There is a woman liveth under 
the palm-tree by Ramah and her name is 
Deborah. Let us go unto her. Peradventure 
she shall aid us, for she hath strange knowledge 
of the hearts of men." So they sent unto 
Deborah and she arranged with Barak an am- 
buscade by the stony little stream of Kishon. 
And, behold, a storm arose whereby Kishon was 
turned into a raging torrent, which swept away 
the nine hundred chariots of iron and their 
horsemen and the men-at-arms of Jabin. And 
it came to pass that Sisera, the mighty captain, 
fled on foot from the lost battle to the tent of 
one Heber, a nomad of the Kenite tribe. Now 
Heber was absent that day attentive to the 
bleatings of his flocks, seeking precarious 
grazing in these unsettled times ; and Jael, his 
wife, was in charge of his honour and his tent. 
And Jael met the fleeing Sisera and proffered 
him guesthood, giving him, in token of good 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

faith, as is the custom of the desert, milk from 
her own hands and butter in a lordly dish and 
she set a mantle over him; and, to the eternal 
shame of all the children of Ishmael, she slew 
him even as he slept. 

So Deborah led down from the mountain side 
her horde of wild warriors. Slow was their 
progress for they were burdened with much 
booty, "yea, to every man a damsel or two and 
a prey of divers colours of needlework on both 
sides, meet for the necks of them that take the 
spoil." And all the air was filled with the 
rumbling of the dying storm, with the neighing 
of horses, with the lowing of cattle, with the 
discordance of musical instruments, with the 
shouting of the victors ; whilst in the van, heard 
above the hubbub, like the motif of a frenzied 
orchestra, a woman crieth. 

The earth trembled before Thee. 

The clouds dropped water. 

Their horsehoofs were broken by means of the prancings. 

Oh, my soul, awake. 

Awake, awake, Deborah, 

Utter thy Song. 

In the galaxy of poesy thy song, Deborah, 
and such as thine, shall live. For is not the 
importance of song in the national and social 

[ 40 ] 



THE ASCENSION OF SONG 



life of all races attested by the chroniclers of 
every history. It is a truism to say that we 
care not who makes the laws of a land provided 
we may make its songs. The former are merely 
the dress of the body, changing with country 
and season ; the latter are the enduring memory, 
the beating heart and the nervous system. 
Countless thousands of men adjust their collars 
each morning with an assurance to the listening 
air that for "Bonnie Annie Laurie" they would 
lay them down and die ; yet how few would ven- 
ture to assist the recalcitrant collar stud with 
a quotation from Chitty on contracts or Black- 
stone's commentaries ? If an adage may be said 
to be the wisdom of one on the lips of many, do 
not these popular lyrics spring from our hearts 
with the sentiments and sympathies not only 
of our race but in large measure of mankind. 
Ofttimes they come charged with whispers to 
our subconscious selves, fraught with associa- 
tions which transform the words to beads of a 
musical rosary, tinted with scenic recollections 
that enframe the song, chorused with voices of 
another life, scented with perfumes lingering 
amid the dried rose leaves of memory. 

Perhaps a personal reminiscence serving as 
example may be forgiven. When I was about 

[ 41 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

twelve years old I possessed a voice so notable 
that it inflicted upon me the penalty of singing 
the solos to anthems in my college chapel and 
elsewhere. So befell it that I was in attendance 
at a certain stately Church of England when 
the bishop of the diocese was present and a 
congregation of over a thousand persons had 
gathered. The anthem chosen for the occasion 
was "As pants the hart for cooling streams so 
longeth my soul for Thee, oh, God" ; and in the 
immense choir I stood, a lonely little boy, to 
sing the magnificent solo of that anthem. 

I remember, as though it were yesterday, how 
the organ poured upon the air the power and 
grace of its theme, like the sweep of a cascade 
fretted with sparkling spray. Then came the 
moment for my solo, and another world claimed 
me. I forgot the church, the bishop, the people 
and myself. I could only think of that thirsty 
hart and its unquenchable longing. Into my 
interpretation of the appeal I flung my soul 
and, all unwitting of the earth, I watched my 
treble pass upwards amid the pillars and 
rafters of the church in a mist of prayer, as it 
were the ascending smoke of Abel's altar. 
"Like as the hart desireth — desireth — de- 
sireth the water brooks." High and higher sped 

[ 42 ] 



THE ASCENSION OF SONG 

in boyish treble the words, mystic, earnest, vis- 
ible; until, suddenly, I became aware that the 
bass-solo had joined me; that his message had 
climbed to mine ; that his grand voice outstrid- 
ing the pealing notes of the organ, had hurled 
aloft the words "So longeth — longeth — 
longeth my soul after Thee, oh, God." And 
still singing, well-nigh unconsciously, I watched 
the two voices mingle, the boy's and the man's, 
and the two songs entwine in a garland of vocal 
roses. Up, up, up beyond the carven capitals 
of the nave, beyond the ancient rafters and the 
groined roof; out, out, out into the blue sky 
where the summer clouds joined their lacery to 
the moving spiral of our song ; upward and on- 
ward sped the olden message, the ache of the 
heart for utmost knowledge, essenced in prayer, 
winged with music, buoyed by the organ tones, 
purged by space and time until it merged in the 
myriad sympathetic vibrations which tremble 
as a glory around the ultimate source of 
thought. I am no musician; but, in truth, I 
think that Polyhymnia, the Muse of sacred 
song, stooped down that day from her bowers 
on Mount Olympus and kissed an earthly boy. 
On another occasion "The Three Fishers" 
crystallized for me from vague solutions of the 

— — 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

mind into a gem laden with hidden lights. It 
was a moonlight night at Cromer on the east 
coast of England. The fishing boats of that 
quaint harbour were about to put forth into 
the North Sea, and the ceremony of blessing 
the fleet, alas now falling into disuse, was to be 
performed. The pastor of the little port, for 
in those days Cromer was but a humble place, 
stood at the end of the jetty and pronounced 
a few brave and simple words, such as men 
value at the edge of dangerous callings. Then 
in the hush of the night, with only the ripple of 
the sea for accompaniment, a lady, famous in 
the realms of song, sang "The Three Fishers." 
Out, far out upon the waters floated her lovely 
voice. The brown sails of the fishing smacks, 
rocking on the bosom of the awaiting tide, 
curtesied to its phrasings. The moon tarried 
amid her attendant clouds. The sea birds 
glided noiselessly upon their wings lest any mo- 
tion of theirs should mar the grace of her, who 

Uttered such dulcet and harmonious breath 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song. 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
To hear the sea-maid's music. 

Now and again some song, like a divine 
tuning note, awakes the souls of men. None 

[ U ] " 



THE ASCENSION OF SONG 

may preknow the fortunate hour or the elected 
means. How should Ruget de Lisle have fore- 
seen the destiny of his "Chant de Guerre," as 
it was first named; the "Marseillaise" as it is 
called today. The story goes that he wrote 
both the words and the air in a fit of patriotic 
excitement after a public dinner, and well may 
this be so, for the inadequacy and bombast of 
the words are only saved from merited extinc- 
tion by the stirring melody and its inspired 
adaptation to the service of its theme. Yet to 
this martial tune the heart of a noble nation 
has throbbed for a century, and millions of men 
have marched to death as to the dawn of day. 

It seems to be a psychological law that great 
moments in the lives of nations beget notable 
and inspiring songs. So in the American Civil 
War, out of the flame and agonies of that time 
was born the superb battle hymn, "Mine eyes 
have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." 
So also in the stress and tension of the Boer 
war, when the pent thoughts of a race, which 
is readily moved inwardly but outwardly is in- 
flexible in self control, sought for expression, 
suddenly "airy and excellent the proem came" 
in Kipling's Recessional, "Lest We Forget." 
In the same spirit America produced during 

[ 45 ] ' 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

the late war the unmellifluous strain "Over 
There," which, although hardly of an enduring 
type, unquestionably played a not inconsider- 
able part in drawing to her banners the earnest 
service of her manhood and womanhood. 

Considered in its evolution from humble be- 
ginnings to beatitude, perhaps the most re- 
markable of recent songs is "Tipperary," which 
in a few years passed from its inception as a 
music-hall ditty to the abode of the gods. In 
its words and air it belongs to the lowliest sys- 
tem of things. Its generic place might be 
classed amongst the invertebrates of music, 
having relationship with the sponges of the 
Archean rocks or with the foraminifera ; yet 
in its swift transition it has attained to a spirit- 
ual sphere whence its echoes must bring tears 
to the eyes of angels. In the red fields of the 
great struggle it grew from nothingness to sub- 
limity. To its tones millions of brave men 
gathered from lands far scattered amid the 
seven seas and marched at its bidding to hard- 
ships, wounds and death, upholding the torches 
of Light against the sinister flags of Darkness. 
Today none may hear it with covered head, for 
it has passed in the golden aura of its associa- 
tions into the glory and the Ascension of Song. 

[ 46 ] 



RHEIMS CATHEDRAL 



VIII 
RHEIMS CATHEDRAL 

Amid the dust and falling debris the wounded were 
hastily removed from the stricken Cathedral. 

Wae News 

A MoEN in Spring; 
Lifting the mists of sleep from silent towers 
Where Clovis, grim, implacable, was 
crowned 
King of the Franks. Its young light showers 
A rain of golden beams on littered 
ground, 
On arch uncarved, on column rising high 
To swelling roof where master-masons cry 

Commands to busy builders; and the 
place 

Echoes Christ's creed 
And Labour's need 
"Into Thy hands, O God! so may our 
work find grace." 

A Summer's Noon, 
Paints with its glowing brush embattled 
Rheims ; 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

Gilding the armed hosts, whose banners 
proud 
Herald the Maid of Arc. Her spirit seems 

To fall in sunlight o'er the acclaiming 
crowd 
Bordering her path to where, on either hand. 
The Chivalry and Church of France now stand, 
Tend'ring to Charles a crown ; to God 
a race; 

While choristers intone 
"Not us ; To Thee alone ; 
Into Thy hands, O God ! so may our 
land find grace." 



An Eve in Autumn, 
Sets with crimson stains on clouding sky. 
Cast not by sun but fires which tell 
The wrath and wrack of men. Wild lightnings 

Bringing their thunders in the bursting 
shells, 
Which scatter death ; e'en to the wounded 'mid 

the straw 
Spread in God's sanctuary — ruined, resonant 
with war. 



[ 48] 



B H E I M S CATHEDRAL 



Its altars desolate, save where, with 
lifted face, 

One to death near 
Murmurs in prayer, 
"Into Thy hands, O God! so may our 
souls find grace." 



[ 49 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



IX 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON 

As out of the crucifixion of One arose Mary, so out 
of the crucifixion of all the world has arisen all Woman- 
hood. 

IF truth hides in the cynicism that the part 
of Woman is to inspire Man with ideals and 
then prevent him from carrying them out, 
it might be urged that he never wholly compre- 
hends his teacher. As the sons of Ammon, men 
circle their father's golden throne each year 
and learn his behests in the glare of day; but 
long time agone, to the daughters of Isis, their 
goddess-mother whispered her counsel, "Show 
to man only the half of thy soul." 

Consistent in her teaching the Moon ex- 
emplifies her advice with a radiance that dazzles 
and with shadows that perplex. No object in 
the heavens has more tenderly encouraged 
man's intellectual growth than the Moon, nor 
is there one that has left him enmeshed in 
deeper wonderments. The ancient records show 
intimacy with her moods but seemingly de- 

-_ - 



THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON 

spaired of exacter definition. The astronomers 
of those distant dajs counted her steps across 
the clouds ; noted her ingoings and outgoings ; 
calculated the period which it occupied her 
ladyship to turn her face from profile and from 
the full to profile again ; yet withal they dubbed 
her "the orb of mystery." Nevertheless the 
data thus gained served men through number- 
less centuries as the basis of their calendar and 
enabled them to fix their civic reckonings, so 
that they called her, Me — the Measurer. And 
from that Sanskrit name were evolved the deriv- 
atives mensis, month, and Moon. 

From palace tower and temple pylon, the 
wise men of the East nightly watched her path 
across the spangled floor of heaven, and like 
courtiers at the passing of a queen, laid their 
petitions at her feet. Nor were their question- 
ings neglected, for down the silver wires of her 
rays came many a gracious answer which since 
has crystallized as myth. Yet still she told not 
aU. The half of her soul was hidden. Why, 
asked they, was her waywardness reflected in 
mankind, whilst she, the mutable yet passion- 
less, showed always the same changeless face. J* 
Nor was it until many centuries had passed 
that later wise men learned through the mazes 

[51 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

of complex mathematics, that barely six-tenths 
of the lunar surface has ever been seen by us. 
Through changes and moods her face remains 
sphinx-like in immobility. 

To what purpose also, asked they, does the 
Mother of the Night fill the minds of men with 
strange imaginings? And in a symbol was her 
answer given. Do you not see how the faint 
bow of the new Moon suggests its future full- 
ness by a delicate rim of gold traced against 
the sky; completeness of desire in a shining 
bubble. So builds she ever in our hearts the 
fairest castles of light which seem as verities. 
Nor until a Galileo had come might we under- 
stand that this circlet of gold is not of her 
making, but of ours. It is due to the light 
falling from the Sun on the Earth and reflected 
to the Moon. Some little touch of pride dwells 
here for us. To an observer on the Moon our 
Earth would present a surface more than ten 
times as large as the Moon offers, so that the 
light reflected from the Earth is ten times 
stronger and by its own reflection traces this 
luminous edge. If to our eyes the beauty of 
the silver Moon slipping between the white 
clouds passes the wit of a Shelley to describe, 
may we imagine what our Earth in its tinted 

[52 ] 



THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON 

glory would seem to this consort of the giver of 
light, whom we have chained to our chariot and 
call our satellite. 

And again these wise ones of the ancient 
towers sought to chart the wanderings of the 
Moon across the star-marked wilderness of sky. 
With each great age of astronomy the calcu- 
lations approached nearer to accuracy. Asia 
handed down to Greece her accumulated ob- 
servations, so that Hipparchus was able to 
work out that which is ungallantly known as 
the eccentricity of the lunar orbit. Yet he was 
conscious that in some illusive particulars his 
deductions were incorrect. Thereupon Ptolemy 
took up the threads and disentangled the celes- 
tial knot still further by discovering what is 
known as the errors of evection. Still, with 
feminine evasiveness, the pathway of the Moon 
was found to differ from its computation. So 
Tycho Brahe essayed the problem and gave us 
the lunar variations; and afterward Newton 
and Laplace continued the long investigations 
which might be open to an indictment for in- 
delicacy were they not prompted by an admira- 
tion so respectful and sincere. 

Yet, withal, the Moon eludes us. We know 
not half the true inwardness of this sentinel, 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

silent and still. We describe her whims with 
satisfied precision, but like the radiant coquette 
that she is, she smiles behind her fan of clouds 
and steeps us in new witcheries. 

It used to be thought that she was cold; a 
thing icy and without heart. Yet here also we 
are in error, for it would seem that she is far 
otherwise ; especially in her sunny moods. Has 
not a learned astronomer written that under 
Stefan's law of radiation her temperature dur- 
ing a certain observation must have been nearly 
at boiling point in order that the noted amount 
of heat could have been radiated? Let none, 
therefore, wrong the Moon again by calling her 
cold, for her attitude towards us, if not in- 
decorously warm, is obviously often of quite 
affectionate temperature. 

Hail then. Orb of Motherhood; Me, the 
prompter of Akkadian philosophies; Astarte, 
guider of Phoenician prows; Isis, giver of the 
dawn; Hathor, conductress from the Halls of 
Amenti; Diana of the Ephesians; Hail. Too 
well have thy daughters of Earth sustained thy 
teachings — ever willing to be partly under- 
stood, unwilling to yield more. Through un- 
counted ages men have gathered ideals from 
thee and from thy daughters and have warped 

[ 54 ] 



THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON 



and wasted them for lack of vision. Be these 
things of the past. As ruined fanes, once built 
in pride are transformed by the alchemy of thy 
silver rays into palaces beyond our utmost 
dreaming, so in the passion of our wishfulness 
to learn, we invoke thee to transmute our errors 
into grace, and to shine forgivingly upon the 
path whereby thy daughters and thy sons must 
climb together to the eternal light. 



[ 55 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



X 

WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 

And the evening and the morning were the first day. 

Genesis 

AS a crystal holds a drop of that ocean 
upon the bosom of which the primal 
morning dawned, so in many of our 
fables and expressions of speech we recognize 
the imprisoned thought of our far ancestors. 
Large was their sympathy though their science 
small. In later ages the pure light of the stars 
shines in the Chaldean epic of "Gilgamash"; 
the forest-clad gorges of the Himalayas are 
pictured in the Vedantic story; the dancing 
waves fling their spray across the pages of the 
Sagas; and all Nature finds her mirror in the 
myths of Greece. But to the earliest races of 
mankind belonged the inestimable privileges of 
moulding our concepts of things, material and 
sublime ; and time has set the moulding beyond 
the power of later knowledge to wholly alter. 
Creation was as a Sphinx, propounding riddles 
too hard for answer, and measureless was the 

[ 56] 



WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 

sea of perplexity whereon man's questing ar- 
gosies voyaged towards an understanding of 
the heavens and earth and all that therein is. 
The latent riches of the world shimmered as 
distant shore lines in the haze of the centuries 
to come ; the energies of nature were as fearful 
and perilous rocks; the elementary facts of 
modern science were reefs uncharted, indicated 
only by the white surf of consequence breaking 
restlessly upon shoals, hidden and mysterious. 
Yet how splendid the opportunities of those 
who moved under the opening eyelids of the 
world's dawn; how intuitive the sympathy 
which framed their picturesque, if erroneous, 
explanations of the problems which confronted 
them ; how transcendent their discoveries. They 
were the first that ever burst into those silent 
seas. Slowly their immediate needs, limited by 
environment, but spurred by each achievement, 
prompted progress. Fire, the red flower which 
bites those who would pluck it, became their 
servitor. Speech, struggling from the inco- 
herence of individual effort to the accepted 
utterance of the tribe, evolved until subtle 
gradations of tone and combination resulted in 
ever-widening vocabulary. Music passed from 
barbaric sounds to ordered rhythm until it 

[ 57 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

caught the notes of Pan and joined the eternal 
anthem. Art, unkempt in its infancy as the 
wild sources which gave it birth, ran laughing 
amid the flowers with beauty shining in its 
youthful eyes. And all life yielded its lessons 
and its treasures until, from experience to ex- 
perience, knowledge came though wisdom 
lingered. 

Beyond the conquered world lay realms un- 
conquerable; the wastes of the firmament and 
the wonders of cosmic force. Appalling must 
have seemed the puzzles presented to our 
earliest thinkers by such contrasting phe- 
nomena as the fiery pathway of the sun and the 
cool starflecked sky of night ; the moving terror 
of the lightning and the stillness of the frozen 
lake; the immobile peaks and the drifting 
clouds ; the sensuous warmth of summer and the 
icy shroud of winter; the wayward moon and 
the whispers of the rushing winds. Little cause 
for surprise is there that our nursery tales and 
daily phrases, our names for the days of the 
week and for the dispositions of men and 
women, stiU reflect the awe with which our for- 
bears worshipped at the altars of the unknown 
gods, until a braver vision transmuted the base 
metal of dread to the gold of a more promising. 



WHEN THE W O E, L D WAS YOUNG 

if but half-sensed kinship in the vast scheme, 
seen and unseen, of the universe. 

Doubtless curiosity has ever been the incen- 
tive from observation to deduction, but always 
the impatience of our minds outstrips our 
knowledge. Even in modern science this rule 
holds true, as when the writer as a boy watched 
Sir William Crooks perfect that delicate in- 
strument, the radiometer, and heard him pro- 
nounce that the movement of its fans, balanced 
in a vacuum, was due to the direct transforma- 
tion of light into motion. Long afterward he 
knew that the spinning of the talc vanes was 
dependent on thermal action; and from this 
beginning developed the theory of radiant 
matter, or matter in a fourth state, which led 
to the electronic theory. So when the world 
was young, man, fearless of error and seeking 
only the immediate and least obscure solution 
to some riddle of nature, did not hesitate to 
create a story which would serve to explain the 
matter in such terms as his own mind could 
compass. The ruder his degree of civilization 
the simpler would be its form, although its 
grace might surpass more erudite substitutes 
in later ages, and hold our remembering speech 
in thrall. His philosophy had at once the dar- 

__ 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

ing and the limitations of youth. Yet if it was 
his soul that spoke then his words should live 
through the long centuries and become the 
mental scenery of a religion or the folk lore of a 
race. 

It was probably in this way that the skies 
were mapped in times of yore into weird con- 
figurations of men, women and beasts. Races 
far removed from each other recognized the 
same shapes indicated by groups of stars. 
Within historic periods the wild bushman of 
Van Diemens Land and the artistic Greek saw 
alike the dancing feet of seven sisters in the 
Pleiades ; and, though so far apart and of such 
different culture, both the Australian and the 
Hellene thought of Castor and Pollux as 
brothers. The North American Indians dis- 
cerned the shambling gait of a bear in the con- 
stellation of Ursus Major; and most of the 
Zodiacal signs may be shown to have existed 
under their present designations, or in kindred 
forms, in widely separate lands for untold ages. 
Indeed the stars have been the source of many 
of our cherished symbols and superstitions, 
which, in various disguises, press in with the 
throng of customs which find acceptance at our 
modern festivals. Not always, however, would 

[ 60 ] 



WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 

it be wise or charitable to strip the mask from 
off the wizened features of some of these per- 
sisting wraiths. Unspeakable crudities and 
cruel usages of long forgotten rites lurk in the 
laughter of apparently innocent observances. 
With some of these it is safe to be familiar, 
with others it were folly to be wise. It might 
even enhance the expectations of some young 
lady to know that when she curtseys to the new 
moon, and turns thrice around, and then spits 
over her left shoulder, she is making in her 
curtseys the pre-Akkadian prostrations to an 
ancient form of Astarte, the Spirit of Fertility ; 
and that in turning thrice she rejoins the very 
questionable dances which fair ancestors of hers 
were wont to indulge in around the altars of 
the Earth's Fecundity; and that in spitting 
over her left shoulder she adds to her other 
graces by assisting to drive away the demons 
which supposedly object to such ceremonials. 

Most of these remembrances deal with the 
attributes of the Sun and Moon and long since 
have retreated to the ruder regions of the earth. 
In some northern races the Moon is still viewed 
as a girl who has had her face spotted and 
scarred by hot ashes which the Sun, in a violent 
temper, threw at her. Courtesy forbids that we 

[ 61 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

should see here the unhappy suggestion of what 
might happen in an Eskimo hut; rather may 
we merely note an incident in the domestic re- 
lations of the Sun and Moon as mates. For in 
the earliest religions the Sun and Moon are 
always personified and generally viewed as the 
regnant and all-powerful pair. Their manners, 
as portrayed in myth, may be royal but they 
are not invariably models for mortals to copy, 
and seldom are they represented as having lived 
happily ever after. Amongst the indigenous 
tribes of India the pre-historic story ran that 
the Sun married the Moon, whose beauty was 
greater than all her rival stars. Alas, she 
proved faithless, and so the Sun cut her up into 
fragments, only relenting when he saw how 
lovely was the quarter Moon. Thereupon he 
allowed her to build herself up to the full, and 
every month he watches with pride the process 
and then in anger destroys her again. 

Nothing visible or heard or vaguely sensed 
in heaven or earth lacked its due chronicle in 
the early efforts of men to explain the environ- 
ment of their lives. The ceaseless conflict be- 
tween light and shadow; the destiny of all 
shown daily in the promise of dawn, the 
strength of noon and the decay of eve; the 

[ 62 ] 



WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 

colours of the stars; the movements of the 
planets ; the terrors induced by eclipses, comets, 
and meteorites; the changeful winds and the 
beneficence of the rain; the flaming arrows of 
the lightning and the angry voice of thunder; 
the cold of winter and the bounty of summer; 
the mastery of fire and the service of water ; the 
marvel of birth and the dread of death ; all find 
their portion in these endeavors to express the 
complex grammar of the universe. 

Then dawns our prosaic age, wherein the 
fashion is to snatch the veil from every passing 
figure in the pageantry of time. Nothing may 
escape research; no illusion may claim rever- 
ence by reason of its white hair. In the lab- 
oratory of knowledge the book of Genesis lies 
upon the dissecting table; the atomic theory 
has shared the fate dreaded by Lamb for the 
Equator and lost respect; no star so distant 
but is constrained to tell its composition. Nor 
might mythology avoid the common destiny, 
and in the process of its examination many a 
kingly fable has been dethroned; stories which 
seemingly were founded upon the eternal hills 
have fallen into dust ; nomenclature and adages 
have proved as bright and enduring as gems. 
A nursery rhyme may transpire to have had 

[ 63 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

its origin in some celestial truth wrapped in 
metaphor when the world was in its swaddling 
clothes. On the other hand some honoured 
myth, apparently occult in its teaching, may 
have no greater claim to our respect than a 
passing interest in its historical application to 
the election of a Tribune of Rome for which 
occasion it was invented. 

Much that glitters in tradition is made of 
base alloy, yet much comes down to us weighted 
with truth from days misty with distance, but, 
in the morning of our world, clear as the eyes 
which looked into the wonders of heaven and 
earth and read their messages with brave 
simplicity. 



[ 64 ] 



KNOWLEDGE 



XI 

KNOWLEDGE 

THERE is an hour at the zenith of a 
summer's day when Nature rests. Its 
law is silence; beneath its spell all life 
is hushed. The birds rest their tuneful throats, 
the insects fold their wings of tinted velvet and 
prismatic gossamer, the glad trees sleep, the 
rushes at the margin of the mere forget to whis- 
per the secrets told them in the Grecian tale. 

In the glades of a primeval wood in Northern 
Michigan, wrapped in the quiet of this en- 
chanted hour, the shadows were bending east- 
ward. From the brazier of warm earth an 
ascending incense from flower and scented fern 
filled the aisles of the leafy cathedral, but the 
worshippers were invisible and unheard save 
for the murmur of small winged things couched 
in their myriad beds of green. 

In such environment dull seem the pages of 
philosophy and the volume in my hand grew 
heavy. Its lines began to melt and merge as 
the variant grasses of a field accept one pattern 
of light and shadow from the passing clouds. 
But the mind of man may never rest, awake or 



[65 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

asleep, and struggling to concentrate again 
upon the page I read, "Now Socrates went up 
to Delphos and asked of the oracle, *0£ 
all knowledge which is the highest?' And the 
oracle gave answer, 'Know thyself.' " 

Straightway my thoughts bore me to the 
altars of the Delphic oracle whereat it seemed 
that I was witness of my own initiation as one 
who sought the Knowledge of the Self. Thence 
voyaged I to the Nile and in the dark recesses 
of pyramid and pylon heard the teachers of 
Hermetic writings expound to the living the 
ritual of the dead. Thence passed I to the 
shrines of Indus, where white-robed Brahmins 
intoned the Vedantic law, "All knowledge dwells 
in the knowledge of thyself." 

Some priestly voice, lifted in fervor and 
echoing amongst the trees, broke then my 
reveries, and I saw beneath a neighboring fern 
where the golden light was tangled with the 
drifting shadows, crouching forms, the fairies 
of our youth, petal-clad, stamen-armed and 
capped with floral bells. For awhile they 
watched me. Anon one of the bolder, perchance 
a chieftain in the ranks of elfdom, advanced 
and cried, "Obey the woodland law." And my 
book slipped from my hand and I slept. 

[ 66] 



KNOWLEDGE 



Awake in Asphodel? No this must be 

Some vale of fairyland, or Pan-loved glade 

Where Shepherd pipes to Shepherdess in Arcady 
Under the willows; and the light and shade 

Weave golden nets around their feet 
To trip young hearts if time be missed. 

Or laughter's music stop. 

Could one but meet 
The dwellers of these dales, and they would list, 
'Twere well to ask of what realms are these lands. 

And by what path one best might rise 
To yonder hill-top, where the wreathing mist 

Enwraps a mystic city buUt as an eyrie 
Of the gods; white-pinnacled beneath the canopy 

Of sky, like some translucent Din 
Perched on the heights in Dante's scheme 

Of life's embattlements. 



So in my dream 
I thought: and, with unguided steps set forth 

To climb the steep, encountering many a fall 
On treacherous ground, and stumble by the way. 

Till where the slopes had end, an outer wall 
Grafted on crag and precipice bade stay 

My further trespass. 

On the mountain crest 
Betwixt the restless earth and quiet firmament 

Loomed the fair city, distant, white, 
Veiling the stars in its own light 

As Pharos of a harbour — the far quest 
Of proffered peace; the peace of Knowledge blest 

And task accomplished. 



[ 67 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

Yet were my steps 
Stayed by the circuit of its walls. 

Fivefold and separate, rings of stone 
Winding implacable, immense, alone. 

Conjoint in purpose; massive bands 
Forged on the mountain's brow by God's own hands 

To be its diadem. 

Void of fault. 
In grim alignment ranged the mighty walls. 

Towered and buttressed to withstand assault 
By storm or man, or Time, 

That silent conqueror, who plans with Fate, 
Using for arms the sunbeam and night's rime 

The heat and hurricane, the patterned-lace 
Of dew, summoning from space 

The tireless legions of his Djins 
To fashion ruins for his chair of state; 

His sceptre swaying elements; his robe the winds; 
His ministers the hours, whose breath 

Was theirs unborn, passing undying into death. 

And I did mark 
That in the circuit of each stony zone 

A single gate was set, like Cyclop's eye, 
Pond'rous with brazen plates which shone 

Red in the fading light; 
Their sentinel Eternity. 

None there was to swing 
The gates of Knowledge open, and my call 
Echoed from frieze and bastion, turret and wall. 

Peopling the silence with voices answering, 
"Ask in thine self, there is no other 

Entering in." 

feil 



BEGINNING OUR YEAR 



XII 
BEGINNING OUR YEAR 

Life is not dated merely by years. Events are some- 
times the best calendars. — Beaconsfield. 

SWEET are the uses of anniversaries. 
Life is milestoned with these recurring 
dates which claim, in passing, a sigh, a 
smile, a thought of pride, a gleam of hope. 
They serve to draw our attention to the distance 
traveled, bidding us forget our weariness and 
gaze with courage upon the heights ahead. 
Some of these milestones are off the beaten road 
and are encountered only in the strayings of 
the individual. They belong to our personal 
calendars. Where they lie in the shadows of 
time they are weatherworn, o'ergrown with the 
lichens of years, screened by tangled growths of 
ferns and grasses, bowered in flowers strewn by 
the forgiving hands of God upon our memories 
that sleep. Their inscriptions are difficult to 
decipher. Others that stand out in the full 
glare of day and the dusty spacings of the 
wider path are clear, too clear perchance, as 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

though they found renewed engraving from the 
eyes of the heart. 

Most of the notable milestones of time, how- 
ever, are for the guidance of all ; and insistently 
ask notice from the hurrying crowd of hu- 
manity. Of these none proffer wiser counsel 
than the festival of the new year, radiating to 
the minds of all an impulse towards universal 
good will. From its incised face, white with 
the light of grace, rays beat upon our lives, 
which lift to heaven wreathing clouds of 
thoughts enwrapping the world in an atmos- 
phere of kindness, flecked with tear-laden 
clouds. If thoughts were visible, how complex 
would seem the maze of mental messages pro- 
jected at the close of each year. 

Yet rightly considered there is little reason 
to adopt a fixed date for the expression of good 
will or for the celebration of an era professing 
the Christian code of morals. Our year can 
have no true beginning or end. Time, as gen- 
erally regarded, consists of periods defined by 
expediency — hours, days, weeks, months, 
years, cycles — concentric circles, the lesser 
contained within the next larger measure. And 
since each of us may commence the drawing of 
a circle at whatsoever distance from the centre 

[ 70 ] 



BEGINNING OUR YEAR 



seemeth good, it follows that no moment of time 
can truly possess a fixed nature. 

Throughout the ages, men have differed in 
the commencing point of their measurements of 
time. The year which begins for us on the first 
day of January is then already well advanced 
in some countries, while in others the people 
have scarcely begun to prepare for its advent. 
With more justification than can be urged in 
support of our own arrangement of the cal- 
endar, the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Persians 
began their year at the autumnal equinox, ap- 
proximately on the twenty-first of September. 
The Greeks moved on a quarter of a year and 
commenced the drawing of their annual circle 
at the winter solstice, the twenty-first of Decem- 
ber. About the middle of the fifth century 
before Christ it occurred to the Athenians that 
it would be more comfortable to start all cal- 
culations from the middle of the summer rather 
than the middle of the winter, and so, by a 
simple process of law, and a public notice in- 
cised on a rock on the Martian hill, the year 
found itself beginning on the twenty-first of 
June instead of the twenty-first of December. 

The ancient Romans saw no just cause for 
this change and with the obstinacy of their 



[71 ] 



THE S C H O O li OF SYMPATHY 

race continued to celebrate the beginning of the 
year on the twenty-first of December. But the 
accumulating errors in their calendar gradually 
brought about such confusion in the official 
festivals that the whole matter was submitted 
to the astronomers obeying the nod of Caesar, 
with the result that the year awoke one fine 
Roman morning to find itself beginning on the 
first day of January. 

Paganism had difficulty, however, in trans- 
ferring its lares et penates to its successor, and 
Christianity required over fifteen centuries be- 
fore any agreement could be arrived at con- 
cerning the day when the New Year ought to 
commence its career. The Christians of the 
early centuries stoutly maintained that the cor- 
rect date was the twenty-fifth of March, and 
very valiantly, if a little impetuously, they 
fought in street and temple in support of their 
theories. The idea was probably due to the 
fact that the Jewish ecclesiastical year began 
with the spring equinox, and thus coincided 
with the story of the gospels. But the Saxons 
had their own opinions on the subject, and re- 
solved to combine the celebration of the birth 
of Christ with the birth of the year, observing 
both on the twenty-fifth of December. 

[72 ] 



BEGINNING OUR YEAR 



At the Norman conquest of England, William 
the Conqueror was crowned on the first of Jan- 
uary, and his attendant bishops, aware that the 
emperors of Rome had observed this date as 
New Year's day, advised its adoption, and for 
several centuries it was adhered to. Later 
England reverted to the views of the rest of 
Christendom and commenced her official New 
Year on the twenty-fifth of March. Still later 
the Gregorian calendar (1582) rectified the an- 
nual measurement of time and restored the first 
of January to its position as the New Year's 
day. This edict was accepted by most of the 
Catholic nations, while those countries which 
hold to the Julian calendar, such as Russia, and 
Greece, still celebrate the New Year twelve days 
later than ourselves. 

Such is the brief but complicated story of 
the adoption of our New Year's day. Its 
graceful custom of giving gifts on that date has 
an equally far-reaching history. The month of 
January takes its name from the Latinium god 
Janus, to whom the Romans were wont to offer 
sacrifices and gifts at the festival of his month, 
and to garland his statue with flowers. Con- 
sequently, when the calendar of Caesar enacted 
that the year should commence on the day which 

[ 73 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

had for centuries been devoted to the feast of 
Janus, the idea of giving gifts was extended 
from the god to his worshippers, and Romans 
bestowed upon their friends and neighbors small 
offerings in the name of Janus. These gifts 
were called strena, from the branches of vervain 
gathered in the sacred grove of Strenua, the 
goddess of strength — a word still surviving 
in the French phrase for New Year's day, le 
jour d'etrennes. 

It is obvious, therefore, that, save for com- 
pliance with civic and clerical conveniences, 
there is no true ending or beginning to a year. 
Each day is equally entitled to be viewed as 
its opening. Nor may any year grow old, for 
it is ever like the houris of paradise, beauteous 
and young, offering us its gifts of fuller oppor- 
tunity and endowed with the eternal benediction. 



[ 74] 



THE VEIL OF ASTARTE 



XIII 
THE VEIL OF ASTARTE 

WITH reflected glory from the Sun, 
made red by the mists of Earth, the 
cult of Baal encrimsoned the path 
whereby men stumbled through the centuries to 
nobler philosophies ; its fierce teachings softened 
somewhat by the willingness of man to woo the 
favors of Astarte, the moon-goddess. These 
balanced opposites, male and female, strength 
and grace, are derivatives of prehistoric types 
of worship; and the rayed influence of their 
gold and silver beams lit the creeds of Egypt, 
Persia, Crete, Greece, and Rome. Not even the 
Jewish lore, most conservative of spiritual con- 
cepts, could avoid the thralldom of these orbs 
of heaven, and in sympathy with the times of 
its evolving literature we find Samson (i.e. 
Shamesh, the Sun-god) forfeiting his strength, 
made manifest in the luxuriant locks of the 

[ 73 ] ~ 



THE SCHOOIi OF SYMPATHY 

solar corona, to the betraying shears of De- 
lilah (i.e. The Twilight); while nigh to the 
walls of the sacred Jerusalem proudly stood 
"the high places which Solomon, the king of 
Israel, had builded for Astoreth." 

For many generations the study of the Bible 
had filled western minds with pictures of the 
magnificence of the cults and achievements of 
the Babylonian and Phoenician civilizations, yet 
not until the nineteenth century was serious 
attention given to resuscitating the evidences of 
Chaldean traditions. Christianity had accepted 
the Hebraic writings as its architectural plan 
and to suggest an examination of the founda- 
tions was viewed as an unnecessary and possibly 
adverse criticism of the structure. Wherefore 
disturb the dust of ages? Were not all these 
matters sufficiently written in the books of the 
kings of Israel? 

But motion is the permeating and encom- 
passing law of the universe ; else The Ultimate 
were synonymous with stagnation and the in- 
finite manifestations of an afar and unthinkable 
Origin would be as green scum upon the idle 
mill pond of creation. So came it to pass that 
despite the covert protests of dogma and the 
objections of entrenched orthodoxy a new-born 



THE VEIIi OF ASTARTE 

race of analytical miners delved into the litera- 
ture of the Orient ; and the excavators of dead 
empires went forth to dig. Maspero and his 
compeers uncovered the monuments of the 
Pharaohs, while Champollion, guided by the 
trilingular Rosetta stone, translated the hiero- 
glyphs with which they were emblazoned, and 
bade the mummied lips of Egypt speak their 
story. Renan analyzed the Semitic traditions, 
Max Miiller and others traced the wanderings 
of the Aryans and the origins of the Vedic 
writings ; and from a hundred lands the children 
of the far-spread West retraced the centuries, 
coming again to learn from the Mother East. 
Nor might the buried secrets of Western 
Asia be longer ignored. Amongst the pioneers 
of this renaissance must always be remembered 
Botta and Layard, who drew the sand-shrouds 
from the mound graves of Kuyunjik and its 
buried sisters, and showed us Assyria in her 
zenith. Once more the Tigris and Euphrates 
bore upon their waters the effigies of Baby- 
lonian kings who erstwhile were as myths to us. 
Strange gods of Akkad ascended thrones in our 
museums, from whence they stared with stony 
eyes at modern crowds whose knees were un- 
bent before them, while children undismayed. 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

played around their attendant bulls of Bashan. 
Sheltered from London fogs beneath glass 
cases, and labelled like novels in a book-store, 
were ranged the state documents and libraries 
of Assyrian kings; cylinders and tiles and 
tablets of clay delicately incised with texts in 
cuneiforms, offering us the contracts, love 
letters, laws, epics, maps, and astronomical cal- 
culations written in days when Nimrud "glo- 
ried and drank deep." But. like the dumb 
figures of the gods whom they invoked, these 
clay volumes still withheld their messages from 
the few scholars who struggled to decipher their 
forgotten script. 

Of those who sought to give speech again to 
the lifeless tongue of Chaldea none were more 
persistent or deserve higher place than George 
Smith. As far back as 1867 he had translated 
the arrow-head writing on a Babylonian tile 
which mentioned an eclipse of the Sun, and this 
fortunate allusion enabled the astronomers to 
fix the date of the inscription. Again in 1872 
he achieved universal reputation by his trans- 
lation of the Chaldean account of the Deluge. 
Portions of the chronicle were missing, but its 
similarity with the biblical story at once 
awakened general interest, and the art of print- 

[ 78] 



THE VEIL OF ASTAETE 



ing became the servitor of the original Chaldean 
scribe by reproducing in facsimile his incised 
tablets in nearly every magazine and paper in 
the world. 

The writer well remembers the earnest face 
and short strong frame of George Smith as he 
bent over some engraved tile of Sargon or Sen- 
nacherib at the British Museum, and how the 
grey eyes would light with triumph when he 
had pieced together the broken fragments of a 
difficult line and found his interpretation held 
reference to a name or incident of historic im- 
portance. At such moments he seemed the in- 
carnated spirit of an Assyrian handling his 
materials with the tenderness and exactitude 
which men are wont to use who do enduring 
things. 

The new field of literary research thus opened 
so appealed to the scholarship and editorial in- 
stincts of Sir Edwin Arnold that in January 
1873 he arranged with George Smith that the 
latter should take charge of an expedition to 
excavate the mounds of Nimrud near the city 
of Mosul, and other sites in ancient Assyria^ 
at the expense of the Daily Telegraph of Lon- 
don. Many weeks were occupied in preparing 
this expedition and providing its stores and 

[ 79 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

special instruments for modern methods of ex- 
cavation. When all was ready the Turkish 
ambassador in London informed us, at the 
eleventh hour, that it would be essential to ob- 
tain a firman direct from the Sultan, since 
objections had been raised by the Sublime Porte 
to any further excavations in Mesopotamia. 
The Turks were convinced that the Giaour had 
knowledge of vast wealth hidden in these 
mounds of rubbish and they obdurately refused 
to allow the proposed enterprise to go forward 
unless they received their share of the gold and 
silver to be unearthed. 

Nothing daunted, Edwin Arnold resolved to 
travel to Constantinople and beard the viziers 
in their den. The journey down the Danube 
and through the Balkan States was full of in- 
terest, and after those interminable delays 
which are the salt of all Oriental negotiations, 
the object of our pilgrimage was accomplished. 
Whether it was the eloquence of the poet, or 
his ability as a man of affairs, or his undertak- 
ing to hand over to the Sublime Porte all the 
gold and jewels which might be discovered 
matters little now ; the Sultan relented and gave 
us a firman to dig where and when and how we 
liked, with special clauses to the effect that we 

[80] 



THE VEIIi OF ASTARTE 

were to retain all the stones and bricks which 
our spades might turn out, provided that the 
Sublime Porte should retain all the gold and 
silver discovered. It would be invidious to ask 
which party to the contract was conscious of 
the better deal. The Sultan smiled triumph- 
antly, and perhaps a little in pity, for doth 
not the Prophet ordain that thou shalt be 
lenient with those whom Allah hath bereft of 
reason? 

The expedition was a complete success. 
Nineveh and other famous sites had their 
shrouds of sand and rubble removed, and 
Nemesis in the shape of George Smith carried 
their kings, in granite and basalt, into cap- 
tivity in London. The missing fragments of 
the Chaldean story of the Deluge were recov- 
ered, and the museums of Europe and America 
were enriched with Babylonian treasures of art 
and literature. Silver and gold found we none, 
to the astonishment and discomfiture of the 
Sultan and his wise viziers, but such as the 
sands of time had to give us they gave with 
generous hands. I recall that amongst the 
sifted rubbish filling a palace passageway was 
hiding a broken ring of bronze to which was 
still attached an exquisite cameo of Alexander 

__ 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

the Great cut in carnelian. So delicate in skill 
and sympathetic in its treatment was this por- 
trait of the Macedonian genius that my ad- 
miration was unbounded, and George Smith set 
it upon my finger saying, "The Greek who lost 
this ring would wish you to wear it for him." 
For the sake of those who are interested in 
psychological research, I may permit myself 
here to relate the last meeting of Edwin Arnold 
and George Smith. During the summer of 1878 
the latter was continuing his excavations at 
Kouyunjik on the Tigris, on behalf of the 
British Museum, when he was prostrated by 
fever. He was carried to Aleppo where he died 
on the nineteenth of August. Now on that day 
Edwin Arnold, wholly unaware of the illness 
of his friend, was walking down the Strand, in 
London, and saw George Smith a few feet away 
from him looking into the window of a shop at 
the corner of Arundel Street. Stepping 
quickly forward to express his surprise and 
pleasure at the unexpected meeting, he observed 
his friend pass round the corner and disappear. 
This corner of the shop was entirely faced with 
clear glass and devoid of doors. Consequently 
this sudden disappearance of the absolutely dis- 
tinct vision was as inexplicable as had been its 

__ 



THE VEIL OF ASTABTE 

appearance. Nor did the solution of the prob- 
lem arrive until he reached home and found 
awaiting him there a telegraphic message stat- 
ing that George Smith had died that day of 
fever in Aleppo. 



[ 83] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



XIV 
THE BROOK OF REVELATIONS 

BESIDE a path which girds a hill 
In Greece lingers an ancient shrine, 
Broken and desolate; its altars rifted, 
Scattered with dead leaves, drifted 
By remembering winds. 

Beneath its ruined portal an old man rested, 

White haired and wrinkled; 

Belike some Priest forgot 
By Death's quiet reapers in the fields of Time, 

Or Sage whose lot 

'Twas to serve oracles. 

And, as chance straws 
Upon the stream of life meet and obey, 

In sympathy, the call which draws 
Each to the other, I left the modern day 

Which glared upon the path, and passed 
To where the old man sat within the shade 

Of centuries dead. 

[ 84 ] 



THE BROOK OF REVELATIONS 

Our greetings given 
The past usurped the present. Nor speak 
Would he of upstart races, Hun and Turk, 
But led our discourse unto days when Greek 
Was sung to Dian, and Pan did lurk 

Among the reeds. We spoke of Hesiod 
And his pageantry of gods ; of quests 

Odyssian; of the embattled ranks which 
trod 
Before the gates of Troy; of Pluto's guests; 

Of Ena, bringing from the underworld 
Her gift, each springtime, of the fairy flowers 

Which winter hides ; of Dana?'s golden 
showers ; 
And that strange fable of Narcissus, 

So wrapt in love of his own beauty 
That love of others and life's duty 

Were all forgot and, at a look. 
He sprang to his own image in the brook. 

"So runs the tale," my friend asserted, 
"But tales do ofttimes miss the sense, or feint 
At facts, misleading men, and Truth per- 
verted 
Leaves judgment false. 

'Twas life, not death 
That came, when, prone beside the stream. 

[ 85] 



THE S C H O O li OF SYMPATHY 

Narcissus gazed upon its mirror and 
therein 
Descried his inner strife." 

"Is it not so?" I asked, 
"That his own face, so often praised in 
song, 
Bereft the sight by its own beauty?" 

"Son, they have told thee wrong. 
Faultless it was in seeming; alas, that mask 
should be 

So false in semblance ; for I was he. 
The fair Narcissus, son of Cephissus and 
Liriope, 

Foremost in Thesbian grace. 

"Yet not my face 
It was which then I saw reflected. 

Borne on the moving stream 
Beneath my wondering eyes. 

But to my soul's surprise. 
The sequence of the lives that I had lived ; 

Lives filled with powers neglected; 
Many and base and loveless ; stretching far 

Into the ages gone. 

Each life did pass 
Before me in pictured revelation, distinct 

fiel 



THE BROOK OF EEVELATIONS 

Like profiled cameo standing white 
Against its ground of blue, instinct 
With the feebleness and slight 
Of days amiss and aright. 

"And, in that moving glass 

Of Truth, 'twas shown how poor a thing 
Narcissus was; how graceless, false in ring. 
How most unfair his soul looked in the stream 

Of life. 

And from the dream 
Of that clear sight, fraught with its past, 
I learnt the aim of life, and that at last 
Narcissus should be fair. 



[ 87 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



XV 

A PARABLE 

SHE stood, like Rebekah at the well; a 
woman of the nomad Arabs, clad in the 
blue burnous worn by her race. Over her 
head was thrown, with careless grace, a fold of 
her garment screening part of the face ; empha- 
sizing the beauty of her dark eyes, pensive be- 
neath the smooth, brown forehead. Where 
water had splashed from o'er-filled pitchers the 
ground was russet colored, and trodden level 
by innumerable bare feet. Farther oif the sur- 
face was sun-bleached and seamed with gaping 
cracks, in and out of which glided the green and 
mottled lizards. At a few paces grew two 
palms, in the loom of whose leaves was woven a 
trembling fabric of golden light and sepia 
shadow, cast over woman and well. Overhead 
stretched the infinite blue of Egypt's sky. 

As I approached I noted that the woman 
sought to pour water into a trough for the 
benefit of two thirsty goats, but the vessel 
proving too heavy to be handled in this manner 

[ 88] 



A PARABLE 



by such slight arms as hers, the privilege fell 
to me of helping her; and whilst the animals 
drank, we spoke of the mute gratitude of beasts 
for service rendered. 

"If my intuition speaketh true, my sister, to 
you are known only the thoughts which are 
born from gentleness." 

"Not so, brother," answered this daughter of 
the desert, "I have known other thoughts, but 
Allah is merciful. Remembered are his teach- 
ings. 'Twas little time ago my husband and I 
quarreled, and in my anger I spoke to him in 
words that had been madness if used at any 
other time; aye, and were madness, for is not 
anger always madness? And in his rage he 
seized me by the wrist so hard that the impress 
of his fingers left a blue bracelet stamped 
around my wrist. It was not a bruise or time 
would have lessened it, nor did it hurt, save in 
my heart. I told him not of this badge of re- 
proof which I wore upon my wrist ; nor confided 
I in any. But Allah sees all. 

**Three days agone I was coming hither with 
an empty pitcher when I met two men quarrel- 
ing over the profit on a bag of dates. From 
words they came to threats and from threats 
to blows. 

fssT] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

"There was none to help so I laid my pitcher 
down, and ran between the quarrelers, imploring 
them to remember that only the dogs of the 
street fought thus, and that Allah gave reason 
to men that they might arrange in fair ways 
their disputes. The men tried to push me 
aside, but I would not go, and held my place 
between them; and the delay won them to 
laughter and friendliness again. 

"Brother, the end of my story shall answer 
your thought of me. The men went on their 
way together. I refound and filled my pitcher, 
and with glad feet returned to the village. 
There, as I lifted the pitcher from my head, 
the burnous slipped from off my arm, and be- 
hold the badge of anger upon my wrist, worn 
so many days, had gone; my arm had for- 
gotten ; only my heart remembered. Allah sees 
all." 



[ 90 ] 



A ROMANY PROPHET 



XVI 

A ROMANY PROPHET 

And this our life, . . . 

Finds tongues in trees, books in tlie running brooks. 

Sermons in stones. As You Like It 

IN every object dwells the still small voice 
which sympathy may hear. A picture, 
statue, vase convey to us the subtle mes- 
sages entrusted to them by their creators ; how 
should a leaf, a flower, a crystal be less eloquent? 
Sometimes the object speaks of itself and in 
our inmost selves we listen; sometimes it stirs 
our memories to responding tones which join 
the echoes of days agone; sometimes it wakes 
the superconsciousness which is latent in each 
of us. I remember an exceptionally intelligent 
workman engaged in fixing supports to the 
cover of an Egyptian sarcophagus refusing to 
continue at his task because of the strange 
voices he heard when at work inside this tomb. 
On another occasion I handed to a friend a 
small terra-cotta lamp of the age of the 
crusades. It had just been excavated from an 

fill 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

old site in Malta, and forthwith he gave me, 
psychometicallj, the story of this humble shard 
with details so dramatic and clear that they 
led to other interesting discoveries. Amongst 
many similar instances I have known a lady 
to suffer keen anguish and to ask protection 
from "a sea of angry faces and shaken fists 
and straw and blood and knives" when quite 
unwittingly she had taken into her hand a ring 
worn by Marie Antoinette at her execution. 

These thoughts are suggested by a small slab 
of peacock marble which the writer uses as a 
paper-weight. It was picked up near a Chris- 
tian shrine amid the Etruscan hills and now 
with mute insistence bids my pen pay homage 
to its place of origin. The mental scene is 
therefore Italian where the brown-roofed houses 
of Siena cling to their terraced slopes like rocks 
jutting from a cascade of peat-colored water, 
bordered by verdant banks and flecked with a 
foam of blossoms. Here, about forty years 
ago, a young English lady, then studying sing- 
ing under a noted Italian maestro and since 
famous on the operatic stages of England and 
America, was wandering through the by-ways 
of this town of Tuscany, and had sought tem- 
porary shelter from the glare of the noonday 

__ 



A ROMANY PROPHET 



sun beneath a wayside arbor of vine-clad trellis 
work. On one side of this shady refuge stood 
a broken shrine dedicated to Our Lady and on 
the other side trickled into its stone basin a 
small fountain. 

The girl had not rested long in this place 
when a man clad in the Italian peasant's style, 
with cloak thrown over the shoulder and a 
brilliant kerchief tied around his neck, ap- 
proached. In dress he was an Italian but in 
speech and features he belonged to the wander- 
ing family of the Gypsies, whose colloquial 
name of the Egyptians links them with the 
ancient cult of divination. After fulfilling his 
duties to the spiritual and physical man by 
bending in salutation to the shrine, and drink- 
ing at the fountain, he addressed the girl. 
Their conversation led to the golden sunlight, 
and from thence to the systems of other worlds 
which the stars denote, and how the prayers and 
aims of men must find somewhere in the starry 
vault the responses sought. 

Ultimately the Gypsy asked her if she truly 
wished to know what the stars had to tell her ; 
and half in curiosity and half for adventure's 
sake she promised to meet this wandering child 
of the Romany clan beneath the shrine of Our 



[93 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

Lady when the sky was dark and its script clear 
to read. 

Accordingly at the appointed hour she left 
the silent streets of the town and found her way 
to the lonely shrine; no longer the jealous focus 
of the Sun but bathed in the light of the Moon 
and its choir of attendant stars. The Gypsy 
was already there busily drawing with his staff 
sundry figures in the dust of the ground, while 
every now and then he would look upward at 
the sky and apparently bring back therefrom 
some note to add to his hieroglyphs or find 
cause to erase some sign not in harmony with 
his thoughts. 

After watching him some time she drew near, 
and he acknowledged her presence with a quiet 
gesture but continued silently his reading of the 
heavens and his writing in the dust. At length, 
his calculations ended, he studied them intently. 
Then, carefully obliterating all that he had 
written, he approached the wondering girl and 
spoke. 

"Madonna, thy life will shine with the bright- 
ness of the stars above, yet thy brightness must 
be short-lived. It will be the brightness of a 
shooting-star that calls the world to notice. 
The gift of song is thine. Numberless are the 

[ 94 ] 



A ROMANY PROPHET 

men and women who will come to hear thee sing, 
and in their hearts they will love thee. Yet 
there shall be one amongst them who loves thee 
most. He will be thy husband, and to him thou 
shalt bear three children; one shall die as a 
child, one shall die in a far land where palm 
trees grow, and the third shall dwell in a land 
where the snows are deep. 

"Not many are the years of thy wifehood, 
for the waters of the sea shall swallow him and 
his ship, and scarcely shall be known the place 
of his burial beneath the great waters. And 
thou shalt hide thy sorrows in thine art of song, 
and rapidly shalt thou attain fame and friends 
and wealth. 

"But thy course is then run. Thy last song 
shall kill thee. Even as thy hearers are ac- 
claiming thy genius, thy light shall end in death, 
in the seventeenth year from this hour." 

The entire prophecy, given in this strange 
way, beneath the watchful stars was fulfilled 
in every particular. The lady became a famous 
singer. She married the captain of an English 
ship which lies "full fathoms deep" with all her 
crew beneath the waters of the Atlantic. She 
bore him three children; one of whom died in 
infancy, another died in India; and the third 

[ 95 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

lives in America "where the snows are deep." 
Soon after the tragic death of her husband, 
when singing before an audience in England, 
she broke a blood vessel and died the same night, 
in the flower of her youth and fame, and in the 
exact year foretold by the picturesque seer, 
who, like Archimedes of Syracuse, used the 
sands as his writing board. 

Be quiet, little paper-weight; have I not 
faithfully set down your message.'^ 



[ 96 ] 



DEATH AND LIFE ARE NEIGHBORS 



xvri 

WHERE DEATH AND LIFE ARE 
NEIGHBORS 

Then God waked, and it was morning. 

Matchless and supreme. 
All Heaven seemed adorning 

Earth in its esteem. 

OVER the sleeping Nile hangs Egypt's 
night spangled with a myriad stars. 
Dimly we discern the mudbank to which 
we are moored, and the adjoining plain, bor- 
dered by the western desert hills. Across the 
broad river lies the tourist-burdened Luxor, now 
restful amid its palms and temples ; and beyond 
are the ghostly shapes of Karnak, scattered 
upon its embracing sands, wind-driven from 
Arabian steeps. Under the prow of our daha- 
beah the ripples are whispering secrets which 
the river learned in the land of Cush and the 
far wilds of Abyssinia. The silence is the si- 
lence of things dead and forgotten; for Savak, 
the crocodile-god, whose robe of state is the 

[97 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

darkness, and whose ministers are the gods of 
the underworld, holds nocturnal court. 

Hush! was that the cry of some priest of 
Ammon, 'scaped from his mummy-case hidden 
in a lonely tomb of yonder Lybian cliifs? 
Above our mast it sounded and now passes on 
soft wings towards the monoliths of Thebes, 
"proud city of No, the jackals and owls shall 
make their dwellings in thy palaces." In its 
flight it has disturbed the dogs of the near-by 
village, and their discordant protest, rising 
from solo to chorus, sinks, too slowly, back to 
solo and silence. Spirit or owl it knew the limi- 
tations of the night, for over the black 
ridge of the eastern hills a greenish light shows 
in the sky. It is the false dawn, the wolf's tail, 
as the Arabs call it, and warns men to prepare 
for the coming day. Slowly it dies, and the 
dark settles once more o'er the land, and upon 
eyelids dreaming of Cheops and his Pyramids, 
or Rameses smiting Hittites. 

Egypt sleeps. 

Again the sky lightens in tints of pinks and 
mauves ; shyly at first, and then in bolder reds 
and yellows, painting the desert in rosy 
chromes. Savak and his hosts of the dark are 
in retreat back to the underworld; his rear- 



DEATH AND LIFE ARE NEIGHBORS 

guard stealing away in shadow of hill and 
temple, while Ra, the new-born sun, mounts in 
his chariot to the fields of heaven to greet his 
father Osiris, and to pour his life-giving rajs 
upon the world. 

Upon the deck of our dahabeah the Arab 
sailors, with faces turned to Mecca, are making 
the seven prostrations and beseeching protec- 
tion through the day. From the village come 
trooping the wives and maidens with water- 
pitchers balanced on their heads. Chattering 
they descend the pathway to the shore, and 
stand ankle-deep in the stream, helping one an- 
other to fill and lift their ponderous vessels; 
and then move homewards in statuesque poses. 
The bank so quiet a few moments ago grows 
populous with brown-faced men intent upon our 
doings ; with large-eyed wondering babies ; with 
goats inquisitive and dogs in search of uncon- 
sidered trifles; while overhead the kites make 
up for noiseless wings by strident screamings. 

Awakened Egypt is astir. 

We ride through the village streets and 
among its dust heaps, passing to the fields 
which its good folk cultivate. It appears as 
though we were moving upon an enormous 
checker-board, divided into innumerable squares 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

of alternate brown arable and luxuriant crops 
of dourah, beans and lentils. The squares are 
separated by channels embanked about a foot 
above the level of the ground, down which run 
rills of water lifted from the river by the 
workers of the shadoofs or the patient buifaloes 
turning sakir wheels. 

Lovely are these fields in the lights of morn, 
carpeted with blossoming crops, and framed by 
lisping rivulets emprisoned within channels of 
chocolate-colored soil. Where the life-giving 
water passes all is green and tender ; and where 
it has been denied the skin of nature is cracked 
and sore; aching beneath the relentless sun. 
Agape with thirst its seamed surface is dan- 
gerous to the rider, yet offers refuge to innu- 
merable lizards which slip into the fissures at 
our approach. From verdant places white ibis 
mourn the days when temples were raised to 
Thoth, the ibis-headed scribe of the gods ; and 
flights of quail, those fat and queruleut 
burghers of the fields, rise protestingly from 
disturbed councils; while palm-doves and the 
crested hoopees play hide and seek amongst the 
flowering beans, and bee-eaters dart past in 
flashes of burnished copper. 

It is the realm of Life. 

' [ 100 1 



DEATH AND LIFE ARE NEIGHBORS 

With an abruptness emphasized by contrast, 
we emerge upon the desert, supreme in desola- 
tion. It is the domain of Death ; the shroud of 
mummied Egypt. In its grim folds, grey with 
the ages, are wrapped the dead of ancient 
Thebes. These wastes of sand, stretching away 
to the Lybian hills, form one vast grave. The 
ground we ride upon is littered with bones and 
shreds of mummy cloths and fragments of 
bitumized-flesh that were, perchance, long since, 
part of some fair maid in the court of Sethi, or 
formed the muscle of a soldier, far-travelled in 
lands he had aided to subdue. The wind dis- 
creetly smooths again the winding sheet of dust 
which the hoofs of our animals had disturbed. 
The place is filled with voices and every object 
tells of the living past. If your soul is so at- 
tuned you may listen to the laughter of her 
whom we thought a maid of Sethi's court, and 
hear the wheels of her lover's chariot bearing 
her back to the river from some ceremony; or 
softly comes the chant of singers leading 
Pharaoh and his courtiers to the temple; or 
again the wailing of hired mourners, the neigh- 
ing of horses, and the murmur of the crowd, 
crying, as they did for Jacob, "This indeed was 
a great mourning." The whole space vibrates 

[ 101 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

with suggestion until some trivial incident of 
the present breaks the spell, and only the desert 
is about us. 

It is the forecourt of Egypt's eternal home, 
motionless, save where the undying sun makes 
dance the air which treads upon the burning 
sands. 



[ 102 ] 



THE MOENING SIGH OF MEMNON 

XVIII 
THE MORNING SIGH OF MEMNON 

The voice of the god might be most nearly compared 
to the tender music of a harpstring. Pausanias 

AWHILE ago as we rode from a village of 
the Theban plain into the western 
desert, we passed from the fields of the 
living to the graves of the dead. Often I have 
stood upon this dividing line between the 
abundant life and fertility nurtured by the 
Nile and the implacable, yellow desert where all 
is death. The small lizards which have their 
home amid the verdant crops wear liveries of 
brilliant green, whereas their cousins who dwell 
a few feet away in the desert are clad in sombre 
browns and yellows. Woe be to the lizard who 
crosses from one environment to the other. In- 
stantly the sharp eyes of some kite, wheeling in 
the nether blue, perceive the green lizard on 
the desert, or the yellow trespasser amid the 
greenery of the fields, and straightway upon 
whirring wings descendeth kismet. It is not 
well to lightly cross the frontiers of life and 
death unless some knowledge is possessed of 
conditioned needs. 

[ 103 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

In the center of this Theban plain, betwixt 
the life-giving river and the forebiding Lybian 
cliffs, appear the famed colossi of Amenhotep ; 
two seated figures, dominating immediate space 
and thought. The hugeness of their stature — 
each seated figure is sixty-five feet in height — 
is magnified by the waste around, and solitude 
adds immeasurably to their dignity. 

What mean these giants, petrified upon 
lonely thrones ? What message stays unspoken 
on their lips.?^ It should be worthy asking, for 
in pose and place they are kings of more than 
the wilderness, regnant in a realm real although 
of the past. The erudite in Egyptology tell us 
that the warrior Pharaoh Amenhotep of Thebes 
erected these two statues of himself; that they 
were originally monoliths of breccia and sat 
before the pylon of a temple long since dis- 
mantled; that the more northerly of the two 
was partly destroyed by an earthquake in 27 
B. C. and the upper part thrown down; that 
the Roman Emperor Septimus Severus restored 
the statue with blocks of sandstone in 170 
A. D. ; and that ancient travellers referred in 
their writings to the northern statue as Mem- 
non. How insufficient sounds so terse a de- 
scription. It reads like the catalogue of some 

[ 104 ] 



THE MORNING SIGH OF MEMNON 

dealer in antiquities rather than an effort to 
hearken to the voice of these kingly figures who 
grant us audience. 

It were fitting to approach prepared. Let us 
therefore recall who Memnon was, and why 
ancient travellers bestowed his name upon one 
of these statues. In the pages of the blind poet 
of Attica we find related the encounter between 
Achilles and Memnon, the king of the Ethi- 
opians, before the walls of Troy. After brave 
words and mutual defiance, they fight and 
Memnon is killed. Then cometh Eos, his 
mother, who carries his body from the field and 
mourns his loss so passionately that Zeus, 
moved by her tears, awakens the dead Memnon 
and bestows upon him the gift of immortality. 

In the course of time this story came to have 
two renderings. To the Greek unversed in re- 
ligious subtleties, Memnon was simply a great 
warrior who came from the far East and was 
slain in the Trojan war. He was, however, re- 
puted to have possessed such superb physique 
and beauty that he became a favorite subject 
for picturing on vases and armor, whereon he 
was generally represented as black, being an 
Ethiopian. 

But to the cultured Greek the legend spoke 

[ 105 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

more deeply. The tears of Eos were not the 
tears of a mortal. Eos was the Dawn, and her 
son, Memnon, could be no other than the Light 
of Day. Each morning, therefore, his mother 
wept for his absence, and her tears are seen by 
men as the early dew-drops. The son of the 
Dawn might vanish for a time, as the night 
shrouds the day, but he could not be destroyed. 
He was immortal. Born in the East, the land 
of the rising Sun, the dewdrops fall from the 
eyes of the watching Dawn until she sees her 
son lift his awakened head above the world and 
run his course across the heavens to the west. 

Passing to Egypt the Greeks were instructed 
in the cult of Osiris and Isis, and how the Sun- 
god Ra nightly conquered the powers of dark- 
ness and came anew each morning to an eager 
world. With minds nursed on these legends, 
and intuitively conscious of their meanings, our 
wandering Greeks visited the Theban nome, 
and there learnt from the priests that a curious 
phenomenon had been discovered in connection 
with the more northerly of the colossal figures 
of Amenhotep. It had been noticed that every 
morning when the rays of the rising sun touched 
the statue it gave forth musical sounds like soft 
moanings or the twang of a harp-string. In 

[ 106 ] 



HE MORNING SIGH OF ME M NON 



keenest sympathy with Nature and prone to 
see in every unexplained movement and sound 
the presence of the unseen gods, the Greeks in- 
stantly ascribed this responsiveness of the 
statue to the morning Sun as the voice of the 
Spirit of Day. To them it was the reborn 
light, answering the maternal greeting of Eos. 
Gradually, as Grecian poesy was wedded to 
the involved Egyptian teachings, "the morning 
sigh of Memnon" became one of the accepted 
oracles of the world. Probably the sounds 
given forth by the statue were due to the pass- 
age of air through the porous stone, caused 
by the sudden change of temperature at sun- 
rise; although the modern traveller may watch, 
as did the writer, an Arab climb the monolith 
and produce dull and unconvincing tones from 
a sonorous stone which lies hidden in its chest. 
But to the ancient Egyptian and Greek the 
statue spoke in no uncertain tones. Venerated 
from the Danube to the sources of the Nile, it 
gave to its votaries, at the hour of dawn, ad- 
monishment, praise or counsel, bidding all who 
listened know that shadows are transient and 
light immortal. 



[ 107 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



XIX 

LIGHT AND SHADOW 

Throughout life, 'tis death that makes life live. 
Gives it whatever the significance. 

R. Browning 

GOD hath made the mountain for thy 
altar, proclaims Zoroaster, shaping his 
teachings to the needs of wanderers. 
To the ancient Egyptians, with their populous 
cities strung on the silt-laden Nile, such limi- 
tation to homage of the gods was unthinkable. 
Nevertheless, the amplitude of Egyptian 
thought could and did conceive, after its own 
kind, the Zoroastrian ideal and offer to light, as 
a fitting altar, the dark heart of a mountain. 
If the Sun would thus accept worship, it should 
be his ; but the mountain must first be rendered 
worthy. Its core should be hewn from it; its 
native roof should be upheld by giants of stone ; 
the walls of its cavernous depths should tell in 
ideograms the aspirations of the land; its 
shadows should teach the true meaning of light ; 

[ 108 ] 



LIGHT AND SHADOW 

and in the night of its chambers the groping 
souls of men should find far vision. 

Out of such thoughts was born the wondrous 
shrine of Abu Simbel in Nubia. Caves in many 
lands have been enlarged by men for religious 
purposes, or carved in the mountain sides of 
India and elsewhere, but none quite in the spirit 
or with the grandeur of this temple, marooned 
in the desert between the first and second 
cataracts of the Nile. What inspiration was it 
that bade the architect of Sesostris forget the 
columned courtyards of by-gone Pharaohs, 
sentinelled by lofty pylons lifting to the eternal 
blue, and conjure a lonely and inanimate moun- 
tain of Nubia into a living anthem to the Sun 
who is born each morn of the dark and passes 
daily from Death to Life. As I wandered years 
ago in the halls of this Nubian temple, I in- 
voked the spirit of its creator, biding him 
teach my heart the secret of his purpose, en- 
treating him to aid me catch some phrase of 
his enduring prayer echoing down the corridors 
of time. And measureless was his response. 

There are epochs in the lives of nations when 
the atmosphere is full of whispered innovations. 
We call them renaissances but they are born 
with a fulness of knowledge and with the in- 

t 109 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

spirations of maturity. So was it in Egypt 
thirty- two centuries ago, when the Ramesesan 
dynasty had made her mistress of the known 
world, and men sustained far hopes with strong 
endeavors. Let us sense how the heart of 
Egypt then could beat; let us go together to 
this quiet altar set in the mountain depths, and 
watch the Silences minister to the eternal veri- 
ties of life. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

We will leave behind us the beaten tracks of 
Egypt; for tours distort and guide books dis- 
color the stream of thought. Our dahabeah 
has ascended the now forgotten first cataracts 
of the Nile; has passed the island of Philae, 
more beautiful in olden days than the Parthe- 
non, where a utilitarian age has buried beneath 
the sighing waves the sanctuaries and colon- 
nades of Isis. In our voyage southward we 
shall not share the fair fertility of the northern 
land for stern in its aspects is tliis Nubian 
river. The fields which stretch away till lost at 
the feet of the desert hills are gone, and no- 
where can be seen those bounteous crops which 
gave to Egypt the name of the land of plenty. 
In their stead rise craggy bluffs of granite or 
limestone through which rushes the deep river, 

[ no ] 



LIGHT AND SHADOW 



or, widening out, its waters travel between rival 
wastes of sand. Poverty is written on the face 
of this sun-scorched country, and its sparse 
population tills with care the narrow strip of 
ground which, as Herodotus says, is the gift 
of the Nile. Thereon the natives grow slender 
harvests of bean and millet and tend the pre- 
cious date palm which grows in the outskirts 
of every village. Between Korosko and Derr, 
there are miles of these palms, like an undula- 
ting fringe of green attached to the brown and 
golden robes of the desert. 

With tortuous course, its bed full of shifting 
shoals, its banks hemmed in or wide by turns, 
the river winds ; fit symbol of the path of life, 
to the riddle of which we seek answer from the 
oracle at Abu Simbel. Each day we sail and 
warp against the current, which reflects in its 
myriad glimpses the fiery eyes of the Sun until 
he sinks, weary as a god may be with purposes 
fulfilled, behind the western hills in whose shad- 
ows lieth Amenti. At night we moor the un- 
wieldy boat at some village ; and as the mooring 
pegs are driven into the bank the villagers 
troop down to watch us, bringing uncouth dag- 
gers, barbed spears and leather goods to barter 
for our simple gifts, amongst the most coveted 



[ 111 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

of which will be an empty bottle to hold the 
oil which your Ethiopian needs to give him 
a cheerful countenance. Shyly come the chil- 
dren, big-stomached and nude, with eyes of ga- 
zelles, gazing, thumb in mouth, at the big boat 
and our strange ways. They are joined by the 
mothers, living statues of unconscious grace, 
with babe on shoulder and black hair decked 
with a Dan« shower of shells and coins. Then 
follow the workers of the shadoofs and sakirs, 
and the elders, grave and reverend seigneurs 
of the wilds, eager to discuss the outside world. 
Darkness falls ; the village sleeps and all is 
quiet, save for the occasional protest of the 
dogs disturbed in dreams by owl or prowling 
jackals. 

tj? ^ ^p 9|r ?!? ^ ^ 

In the final miles of our journey the scenery 
grows sterile and desolate. On both sides are 
low hills over the broken edges of which the Sa- 
hara and Arabian deserts pour their golden 
cascades. Suddenly, as we turn a promontory, 
we obtain a distant view of Abu Simbel rising 
from the water's edge like some mystic dome 
poised between heaven and earth and dimly we 
discern the four colossal figures of Rameses 
which are seated before its portal. As their 

[ 112 ] 



LIGHT AND SHADOW 



dimensions develop, their majestic calm and 
utter solitude impress the attention vividly. 
Not even Karnak, with the heaped-up chaos of 
its bygone palaces, infuses such a feeling of 
awe as the Nile traveller experiences when first 
he comes before these enormous figures, throned 
before the rock-temple of Ra. 

Cut in the rock of the mountain, its fa9ade is 
over one hundred feet high, and on each side of 
the doorway sit two effigies of Rameses II who 
caused this unique shrine to be hewn in testi- 
mony of his conquests and in honor of his gods. 
These statues are sixty-six feet in height, each 
of their forefingers being a yard long. The 
figure on the southern side of the entrance has 
been broken off at the waist by an earthquake 
and lies, in itself an imposing ruin, at the foot 
of its tenantless throne. In a deep niche over 
the door stands Ra, the Sun-god, crowned with 
the disc emblematical of his cult, and fronting 
that east wherefrom each morn he bathes this 
astounding temple with his light. 

On entering we are appalled by the profound 
gloom. The darkness is peopled with the 
wraiths of other days; our voices are 
hushed, our feet as noiseless upon the invading 
carpet of sand. Above our heads the mountain 

[ 113 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

is upheld bj huge columns of native rock, 
against each of which stands a figure of Osiris 
almost as high as the roof, with hands folded 
across the breast, holding the signs of life and 
power. Impassively their eyes regard us as we 
pass down the aisles of their stately home ; eyes 
that are cold and quiet but watchful of men as 
are the centuries. 

Two hundred yards from the temple door, 
where the light of day was left, is an adytum 
or sanctuary, and in the centre of this inner 
chamber stands an altar — the altar of the 
Sun, whereon thirty-two centuries ago Sesos- 
tris, the conqueror of the world of his time, 
sacrificed to the gods amid pageants which 
filled these halls where now reigns solitude. In 
such a place the stillness speaks. Surrounded 
by the emblems of a faith which gave to Greece 
her mysteries and bequeathed many a tenet to 
our modern creeds, one senses deeply those con- 
victions which found such noble expression. 



On my first visits to the temple I wandered 
in its recesses, studied its mural writings, made 
myself familiar with its material aspects. Yet 
each time that I stepped forth from its gloom 



[ 114 ] 



LIGHT AND SHADOW 



into the brightness of day I knew that I had 
missed its message, that I had not heard the 
voices of its ministering presences. Therefore 
I resolved that I would sleep at night within the 
temple, and I bade my Nile sailors not to dis- 
turb me, despite their assurances that evil hap- 
penings would befall. And Isis smiled upon 
my resolution, silvering shore and seated Pha- 
raohs with her rays, but, wistful of my quest, 
she hung the velvet of her night across the 
portal. Within the temple the giants of the 
great hall greeted me with stony stare, and the 
pictured votaries seemed whispering to graven 
gods as I passed through succeeding chambers 
to the sanctuary. Here I called upon the soul 
of him who devised this temple, to teach me its 
purpose and his thought, and I lay down upon 
the altar of Ra and slept. 

Before the night of the outside world had 
turned to day I awoke. A beam of light had 
touched my face and as I sprang up it fell 
upon the center of the altar of the sun. All 
else around was darker than the darkness of a 
thousand nights. But I was aware that in the 
far distance beyond the Nile, at the meeting 
of two hills, the young sun peeped at his sleep- 
ing world. Across the intervening desert and 



[ 115 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

river, through the long corridors of the shrine, 
this first beam passed to lay, as its first touch 
of day, a ray of the eternal light upon this 
altar set in the eternal shadow. 

Wise architect, we sense the heart of thy 
philosophy. If the Sun is born each morn, at- 
taining to fullness of vigor at noon and declin- 
ing slowly to the west at eve; if then it seems 
that it is lost to the world of the living so that 
we know it only in memory, doth it not live in 
the realms of Amenti and come again to rebirth? 
If this be so of Ra, the Lord of Light, shall 
it not be true of Pharaoh, and if thus with 
Pharaoh shall the meanest of subjects share 
less in the great lesson? Wise architect, we 
thank thee. 



[ 116 ] 



BY HIM WHO SLEEPS AT P H I L .E 



XX 

BY HIM WHO SLEEPS AT PHIL.E 

IT is remarkable how unfailingly men, in all 
climes and conditions of evolution, have 
felt the magnetic influences of certain lo- 
calities, often with no apparent reason behind 
the traditions which gather round them. The 
veneration bestowed is not the source of our 
wonder; rather is it the surety and eagerness 
with which men discover and admit the forces 
emanating from such centres; using them to 
their uplifting. Scores of such potent places, 
scattered over the world, have, from different 
causes, swayed the peoples of empires dead 
and living. Most of them possess histories 
which clearly suggest the source of their power 
for good; or legendary lore through the mists 
whereof we faintly discern the far-off cause of 
the transmitted effect. But in the majority of 
cases only their latent influence remains 
screened, ofttimes by a veil of superstition, 
like a fair face hidden behind the mask of car- 

[ 117 ] 



T HE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

nival. The purpose and the power have been 
fulfilled, the story of their origin is lost. 

Such an example is the island of Philae which 
once gemmed the placid stream above the first 
cataracts of the Nile; the joy in the centuries 
that are dead of all lovers of the beautiful; 
the resting-place of Isis and Osiris; the "sa- 
cred-isle" of ancient creeds. In the days 
when Ptolemaic Pharoahs reigned in Sais, there 
were few expressions more revered in Greece or 
Egypt than the adjuration "by Him who sleeps 
at Philae." Contracts and vows of moment 
were made binding by the utterance of this 
phrase. In the mind of the speaker it invoked 
Osiris to bear witness to the oath thus attested 
in his name ; to guide its due fulfilling ; to pro- 
tect him whose promise was thus made in the 
name of the mighty Lord of life, whose realm 
was the universe, and whose resting-place was 
Philse in the far waters of the Nubian Nile. 

How came this small and distant isle to win 
a renown so widely spread and an influence so 
unquestioned? What benediction, forgotten 
amongst the myriad secrets of the Sphinx, first 
gave its protective radiations, and filled the 
early Greeks and Egyptians with the sense of 
this focussed power? In later ages, with the 

[ 118 J 



BY HIM WHO SLEEPS AT PHIL^ 

accretion of traditions and the consequent repe- 
tition of ceremonials, and converging thoughts 
one may understand the accumulated power 
of the island. But the early pages of the 
record are strangely mute. In the days when 
I assisted at its excavation the lowest strata 
of the ground yielded only the crumbled adobes 
of humble villages, the inhabitants of which 
may, perchance, have watched the granite 
blocks of Syene sent down the river to the 
builders of the Pyramids. And the subsequent 
ages piled up layer upon layer of uninstructive 
ruin, like the seared pages of a book which has 
passed through some fire. 

Then came the hour of acknowledgment, the 
time when men first whispered of this island, 
"take off thy shoes for the ground whereon 
thou standest is holy." And shrines arose; 
humble at first, yet sending forth their influence 
for good as tiny pebbles cast into the stream 
form concentric and ever-widening rings beyond 
all measure of their size. And the fame of 
Philae grew apace; and the great ones of the 
earth vied with each other in doing honor to its 
gods, so that rival kings stipulated in their 
treaties for permission for their subjects to 
visit its sanctuaries unharmed, and even bor- 

[ 119 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

rowed the images of its gods in time of stress 
or gladness ; while Pharoahs of Egypt and 
tyrants of Greece and emperors of Rome show- 
ered favors upon its priesthood until "Ailak," 
the angel-island, jewelled with its clustering 
temples, deep bowered amid its palms and gar- 
dens, and shining even as the face of Isis re- 
flected in her silver pool of Chelal, won the title 
"the sacred isle where rest the gods." 

In the ancient writings there is no distinct 
mention of Philae until the reign of Nektanebos, 
about 350 e.g., to whose time the oldest build- 
ings on the island belong. There can be little 
doubt, however, that long before that decadent 
period in Egyptian history the island had been 
held in veneration, and there are indications 
that some shrine existed as far back as 1580 
B.C., when Amosis was waging his long fight 
against the intruding Hyksos, and restoring 
the earlier order of things in Egypt. Prob- 
ably some of these minor temples were removed 
to make room for later and more worthy erec- 
tions, while others being built too near the con- 
stantly encroaching water, the urmiindful river 
destroyed the sanctuaries of its own deities. 
But from the time of Nektanebos to a date 
comparatively modern the island must have been 

[ 120 ] 



BY HIM WHO SI.EEPS AT PHIL^ 



a hive of busy workers, resounding with the 
fashioning of granite columns, the chiseling 
of hieroglyphs, the sighing of ropes straining 
at mighty monoliths, the panting of countless 
laborers spent with their tasks, and the cries 
of master builders. 

It is probable that the peculiar sanctity of 
the place was first ascribed to the gods of the 
neighboring cataracts, but their worship was 
afterwards combined with that of other deities, 
and in the course of time the chief temples were 
dedicated to Isis and Osiris. Most of the im- 
posing buildings, which, until recently, lent the 
island its characteristic appearance, were 
erected by the Ptolemaic Pharaohs during the 
three centuries before the Christian era, and by 
the Roman emperors during the three subse- 
quent centuries. 

Long after Egypt had been Christianized, 
the ancient-worship still held sway in Nubia. 
Despite the edicts of Theodosius, the temples 
were not closed until the reign of Justinian in 
565, when Isis saw the face of Mary painted 
upon her walls and witnessed her chambers, 
decorated with the symbol of the Moon, used 
for the creed of the Cross. Then followed the 
conquest of Egypt by the Arabs and Phil« 

[ 121 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

embraced Islam, whilst in the northern corner 
of the island flourished a Coptic town of sun- 
dried bricks, built like a swallow's nest under 
the eaves of the mighty fanes whose sculptured 
figures were daubed with plaster, and covered 
with presentations of the saints and the in- 
signia of Christianity. 

Let us visit Philse as it appeared in the glory 
of its old age some thirty-five years ago before 
the needs of a utilitarian age had dammed the 
waters of the Nile at Assouan. In that aspect 
of its ruins, and in the full sunlight of a Nubian 
noon, we may better sense the memories linger- 
ing amongst the white colonnades and note the 
shadowed wrinkles upon the time-worn walls. 
Then will we visit it lying prone and dying, 
choosing the hour when from her throne in 
heaven Isis weeps in tears of silvered light upon 
the shrines which sink forever beneath the ris- 
ing river. 

Our way from the Nubian town of Assouan 
will lead us across that portion of the desert 
which borders the cataracts on their eastern 
side; the rim of one of the waste spaces of the 
earth where granite boulders of all sizes and 
fantastic shapes litter the drifting sand. No 
vegetation may live here. We are treading the 

[ 122 ] 



BY HIM WHO SI.EEPS AT PHILuE 

threshold of the profound desolations of Arabia 
from which, verily, no barriers separate us. It 
is nothingness materialized — ^no life or move- 
ment save of the kites, wheeling under a dome of 
metallic blue, and an atmosphere that quivers 
beneath the pitiless sun. The banks of the 
upper river form a lake above the cataracts, 
where our boat, manned by its Arab sailors, 
awaits us, and embarking we put forth to the 
green paradise of Philae beckoning us to its 
palms and shadows. A short row against the 
current which swirls around many self-sub- 
merged rocks and we land on the sandy carpet 
of the sacred isle scattered with its fragmentary 
litter of history. 

Each separate ruin, studied for itself, was a 
gem, lighting one's mind with suggestions which 
still might sway the votary. These piled evi- 
dences of a great philosophy and of profound 
occult studies were numerous some years ago, 
but for most of them the river was already 
forming a sarcophagus which men might no 
more violate. A few still lingered above the 
tide. In all representations of Philse the ex- 
quisite kiosk built by the Emperor Trajan, 
and known as Pharoah's bed, uplifted its grace- 
ful canopy of stone, nor had the invading 

[ 123 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

waters taken from us the peerless colonnades 
which, with their forests of carved capitals, 
lined a causeway worthy the Queen of Egypt's 
heaven. Where much else was ruin, time had 
respected her sanctuary and the coloring on 
many of the sculpturings which covered the 
high walls and columns were still marvellously 
bright. In one room, called the "Chamber of 
the Ten Columns," lingered an exquisite ex- 
ample of decorative art. Here the ceilings of 
blue, picked out with golden stars, and the 
green and orange of the carvings, preserved 
the unchanged look of its former state, and 
furnished a feast of harmonious coloring. If 
Philae in its decay and dust, commanded such 
wonder for the vanished faith to which it 
bears deathless testimony, we may faintly pic- 
ture the scenes of pomp that once enlivened 
its halls and terraces, when the sacred isle was 
filled with royal and priestly ceremonies. The 
gorgeous barges, draped in costly fabrics, then 
came gliding to the sentinelled stairs, where 
their owners joined the glittering processions 
of priests and princes. The dimly-seen interior 
of the temple was brilliant with lamps and 
torches, while the proud knee that only bent 
to Heaven, knelt to Osiris and Isis, and paid 

[ 124 ] 



BY HIM WHO SliEEPS AT PHILiE 

homage, in the mystic forms of that religion 
which has stamped its liturgy on many creeds. 
The pageants have disappeared with the in- 
cense of their lamps but their wraiths of 
grandeur still proclaim the past. 

That view of Phila? was ours thirty-five years 
ago. Now let us see a great queen die ; a centre 
of magnetism surrender its powers when those 
powers have fulfilled their purpose? Modern 
science has done its work only too well, and 
today the grim barrage across the river buries 
the Nile gods beneath their waters. Once more 
let us make our way towards the sad rock of 
Philse, in the sympathetic company of Pierre 
Loti. The wind has fallen with the night, and 
the lake is calm. To the yellow sky of eve has 
succeeded one that is blue-black, "infinitely dis- 
tant, where the stars of Eg3rpt scintillate in 
myriads. A glimmering light shows in the east 
and the full moon rises, not leaden-coloured as 
in our climates, but straightway very luminous, 
and surrounded by an aureole of mist, caused 
by the eternal dust of the sands." As we row 
towards the now baseless kiosk, lulled by the 
song of the boatman, the great disc mounts 
into the sky and illuminates everything with a 
gentle splendour. All is very still; the boat- 

[125 J 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

men cease their Nubian song and the occasional 
call of some night bird suggests only the drown- 
ing cry of a spirit of the past. We glide be- 
neath the capitals of submerged columns and 
stay the gentle movements of the oars lest they 
should break too noisefully upon our thoughts. 
It is diflScult to realize that this is the Philae 
of a few years ago. The very air seems cold 
as if the life blood of the place no longer 
coursed within its walls, and the graven stones 
are clammy to the touch. We hear only the 
sighing of the wind and the lapping of the 
water against the columns and the bas-reliefs. 
Then suddenly there comes the noise of a heavy 
body falling, followed by endless eddies. A 
great carved stone has plunged at its due 
hour, to rejoin in the black chaos below its fel- 
lows that have already disappeared. 

Through the vista of these ghostly realms we 
pass in our boat. It is Pierre Loti who voices 
the dying magnetism of the place. "We are 
not alone ; a world of phantoms has been evoked 
around us by the Moon, some little, some very 
large. They had been hiding there in the 
shadow and now suddenly recommence their 
mute conversations, without breaking the pro- 
found silence, using only their expressive hands 

[ 126 ] 



BY HIM WHO SLEEPS AT PHIL^ 

and raised fingers. Now also the colossal Isis 
begins to appear ; the one carved on the left of 
the portico of her shrine ; first, her refined head 
with its bird's helmet, surmounted by a lunar 
disc; then, as the light continues to descend, 
her neck and shoulders, and her arm, raised to 
make who knows what mysterious, indicating 
sign; and finally the slim nudity of her torso, 
and her lips close bound. Behold her now, the 
goddess, come forth from the shadow. But she 
hesitates; she seems surprised and disturbed 
at seeing her feet, instead of the stones she 
had known for two thousand years, her own 
likeness, a reflection of herself, that stretches 
away, reversed in the mirror of water." 

"And suddenly again in the midst of the 
deep nocturnal calm of this temple, isolated 
here in the lake, comes the sound of a kind of 
mournful booming, of things that topple, stones 
that become detached and fall. Then, on the 
surface of the lake, a thousand concentric 
circles form, chase one another and disappear, 
rufBing indefinitely this mirror embanked be- 
tween the terrible granites, in which Isis regards 
herself sorrowfully." 



[ 127 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 



XXI 

PLAY OUT THE GAME 

Practise what you know and you shall attain to higher 
knowledge, Matthew Abnold 

THE heart of man is a lake which reflects 
the mountains whereon God is throned. 
But the surface must be quiet, and the 
more profound its depths the surer shall be 
this condition of reflective peace. Gusts of 
worry and waves of mood break the image into 
trembling fragments. The water is troubled 
beyond its efficacy to heal, and ills which are 
hard to bear begin to prompt a longing for the 
imagined, because desired, oblivion of death. 

For those who would discard the labors of 
life for the seeming peace of death seldom are 
willing to ^'enquire curiously" if the relief 
sought may be gained in this way. They con- 
ceive the universe as an idle fantasy wherein a 
life, with its accumulated loves and hates and 
variant experiences, may be snuffed out like a 
candle, and darkness and negation follow. 

[ 128 ] 



PLAY OUT THE GAME 

Tears or fears have bred in them a despair 
which seeks redress not in eifort but in evasion 
or suicide, wholly disregarding the probability 
that effort is an essential of evolution, a privi- 
lege continuing as time, a right which may not 
be waived, and being used grows with enlarging 
powers. It is as if our lesson books were to 
prove unexpectedly difficult and in a rage we 
should throw them upon the schoolroom floor, 
refusing consideration to the obvious fact that 
sooner or later we must learn those lessons if 
we are to pass beyond them to a greater knowl- 
edge. The trials which they present are, as 
Zoroaster said, "merely the shavings in God's 
carpentry shop"; it is the carpentry which in- 
vokes our energies. 

These faint-hearted climbers to the heights 
of destiny forget the potentialities of life. Its 
unliquidated assets are ignored by them, its 
opportunities denied, its shadows so exagger- 
ated that their inherent beauty as the children 
of light becomes a source of dread. For surely 
shadows, if our vision is clear, are lovely and 
instructive? When Mohammed was asked what 
was the most gracious thing on earth he re- 
plied with superb simplicity, "the shadow of a 
palm tree." 

[ 129 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

All philosophies have taught this truth in 
various guises, setting forth in due equation 
the concordance of life and death. A remark- 
able example was discovered some years ago in 
Egypt. Its message is broken and any trans- 
lation must necessarily lack the colors of its 
original environment. Yet even in fragmentary 
form and with the colder rendering of our age 
its matter, pertinent and brief, should be worthy 
repetition without apology. The papyrus was 
found amongst the debris of a Nile tomb and 
purports to give us the dialogue between an 
Egyptian and his Soul. It is a document of 
unique interest ; and the profundity of thought 
which inspired its writer deepens our regret 
that the papyrus is so mutilated. 

The beginning of the manuscript in which 
this imaginary conversation is preserved is un- 
fortunately lost, but the subject is obviously 
connected with an evaluation of our mundane 
lives and with the nature of the life to which 
we are born at the event called Death. The 
Soul of the man has concluded an eloquent 
tirade on the opportunities presented by terres- 
trial life and its corroboration, death, but he 
complains that his Soul has not always be- 
friended him with counsel and encouragement; 

[ 130 ] 



PLAY OUT THE GAME 

has not sufficiently prompted him during the 
recent troubles which have come to him during 
his sojourn on the banks of the Nile. 

"Thou hast fled away during these days of 
misfortune, and thou shouldst have kept by 
my side as one who weeps for me, as one who 
walks near me. O my Soul, cease to reproach 
me that I mourn for the sorrows of my life, 
cease to thrust me towards death; how should 
I go towards it with entire pleasure?" And he 
proceeds to explain the various types of labour 
in which he is engaged, and the work he would 
leave unfinished and the affairs of the world 
wherein he is interested. 

Here the Soul interrupts : "Thou cursest the 
other world as if thou wert a rich man." What 
a shrewd thrust is here to test his courage. But 
the man is in no wise disconcerted by this at- 
tack and replies, "It's no good, your getting 
angry, I shall not go." 

Then the Soul pictures to the man the 
troubles of the life he is leading and shows him, 
amongst other incidents, that the child cut off 
in the spring-time of its life by being acciden- 
tally drowned in the Nile, or drawn under its 
surface by a crocodile, has lost the opportuni- 
ties of the physical existence, whereas the ma- 

t 131 ] 



THE SCHOOL OF SYMPATHY 

ture man has already been through varied ex- 
periences, and should be willing to face the 
new adventures of another life. 

After some further arguments urged by his 
Soul the man is convinced that he has nothing 
to fear in death, and he acknowledges that 
while he has not much more happiness to expect 
from living, he would gladly rest a little. What 
follows is evidently the principal part of the 
work, that over which the poet took most care. 

The man declares the misery and contempt 
into which he fell after experiencing those 
events which were doubtless related in the 
missing portion of this extraordinary doc- 
ument. "See, my name is more abused than 
the brave child about whom lies are told to 
his parents! See, my name is more abused 
than a town which is continually plotting re- 
bellion, but which is never found out! 

"To whom shall I speak to-day? No one 
remembers yesterday, and no one dares act at 
the moment. To whom shall I speak to-day.? 
The earth is a heap of evil doers! Death 
seems to me to-day like the remedy for a disease, 
like going out into the open air after a fever! 
Death seems to me to-day like the odour of the 
lotus, like repose on the shores of a land of 

[ 132 ] 



PliAY OUT THE GAME 



plenty ! Death seems to me to-day like the de- 
sire of a man to see his home after many years 
spent in captivity!" 

The Soul, delighted with his success, adds a 
few well-chosen words of congratulation to this 
profession of faith, and promises not even to 
seem to desert the man in any hour of trouble : 
"When you pass over and your body still be- 
longs to the earth, I will keep close to you, and 
yonder we shall dwell together." 

Such is this strange manuscript, one of the 
most extraordinary among the many left to 
us from those ancient days. The undulation 
of the poetry, the harmonies of colour, the 
spirit which inspired the work, may not be re- 
produced from this torn fragment of a dead 
philosophy, but it sends down the ringing 
grooves of time the echo of a brave and 
sympathetic appreciation of life and a readi- 
ness to meet the wider opportunities of death. 



THE END 



t 133] 



